4 ms·

The espionage game has always been about being clandestine, many new techniques attract attention (tor for example) because of their honeypot nature. The old ad

by wyck 13y ago

The espionage game has always been about being clandestine, many new techniques attract attention (tor for example) because of their honeypot nature. The old adage of hiding in the crowd will always be more difficult to notice.

rdtsc 13y ago
Is steganography then something that should be used? "I just like looking at pictures of cats on imgur" (while they actually contain handler's instructions). Now is a 40 year old Syrian man looking at pictures of cats on imgur?. That's anomalous. I guess one can't hide the need for a human factor, in other words tailoring it for a particular case. It used to be that spies had short wave radios. You know they still have stations for example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station That's pretty good. Well except that this day and age spotting someone with a shortwave radio who is already a bit suspicious (maybe doesn't speak with the correct accent) is going to raise eyebrows perhaps. While maybe 10-30 years ago it wouldn't have. So...now twitter is used for number stations: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/11/numbers-stations-on-twitter-an.html http://boingboing.net/2013/03/11/numbers-stations-on-twitter... Except that it is suspicious to access it and so on. In other words it is a hard task not to be suspicious.
- conductor 13y ago
  > Now is a 40 year old Syrian man looking at pictures of cats on imgur?. That's anomalous. Hide in porn, watching porn is not suspicious.
  - rdtsc 13y ago
    Not bad. Also could for plausible deniability of use of encryption. Or I guess to use our governments' newspeak "parallel construction". "So Jon, you use tor a lot. What's going on?" --"Hmm, well I like women wearing high heels stepping on tomatoes alot.." ---"Ok, well that's 10 lashes for you" (Instead of decapitation for conspiring to overthrow the government).
- krapp 13y ago
  The question I would have about this (and i wouldn't be at all qualified to answer) is, how difficult would it be to detect the presence of steganography in images, disregarding being able to decrypt it? In other words, couldn't a state actor just find out what the most common steganography techniques were, derive some kind of fingerprints from that, scan sites like imgur and profile users posting those images?
  - falcolas 13y ago
    > how difficult would it be to detect the presence of steganography in images I would imagine if it's a completely original image, it would have to be done through frequency analysis of the various bits and bytes - not easy at scale. On the other hand, if it's an oft-posted image, a simple diff would show off any hidden messages very quickly.
    - pyre 13y ago
      > if it's an oft-posted image, a simple diff would show off any hidden messages very quickly. How would that scale though? Many 'oft-posted' images are modified by users for legitimate reasons. You would have to be able to figure out which changes were legitimate and which were hidden messages.
- paganel 13y ago
  > "I just like looking at pictures of cats on imgur" (while they actually contain handler's instructions Not sure how pervasive it has become, but the couple of Russian spies that was caught in Germany last year or so were also using comments on Cristiano Ronaldo YouTube videos to communicate with their contacts. From here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10180131/Russia-seeks-spy-swap-for-married-couple-convicted-in-Germany.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1018...): > The middle-aged Anschlags, who pretended to be Austrians born in Argentina and Peru, used "dead letter drops" to communicate with their informers and then transmitted information to Moscow via satellite. Some messages were passed via coded comments on YouTube videos where Mrs Anschlag's online alias was Alpenkuh1 (Alpine cow 1

by wyck 13y ago

rdtsc 13y ago

Is steganography then something that should be used? "I just like looking at pictures of cats on imgur" (while they actually contain handler's instructions). Now is a 40 year old Syrian man looking at pictures of cats on imgur?. That's anomalous. I guess one can't hide the need for a human factor, in other words tailoring it for a particular case. It used to be that spies had short wave radios. You know they still have stations for example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station That's pretty good. Well except that this day and age spotting someone with a shortwave radio who is already a bit suspicious (maybe doesn't speak with the correct accent) is going to raise eyebrows perhaps. While maybe 10-30 years ago it wouldn't have. So...now twitter is used for number stations: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/11/numbers-stations-on-twitter-an.html http://boingboing.net/2013/03/11/numbers-stations-on-twitter... Except that it is suspicious to access it and so on. In other words it is a hard task not to be suspicious.

conductor 13y ago
> Now is a 40 year old Syrian man looking at pictures of cats on imgur?. That's anomalous. Hide in porn, watching porn is not suspicious.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  Not bad. Also could for plausible deniability of use of encryption. Or I guess to use our governments' newspeak "parallel construction". "So Jon, you use tor a lot. What's going on?" --"Hmm, well I like women wearing high heels stepping on tomatoes alot.." ---"Ok, well that's 10 lashes for you" (Instead of decapitation for conspiring to overthrow the government).
krapp 13y ago
The question I would have about this (and i wouldn't be at all qualified to answer) is, how difficult would it be to detect the presence of steganography in images, disregarding being able to decrypt it? In other words, couldn't a state actor just find out what the most common steganography techniques were, derive some kind of fingerprints from that, scan sites like imgur and profile users posting those images?
- falcolas 13y ago
  > how difficult would it be to detect the presence of steganography in images I would imagine if it's a completely original image, it would have to be done through frequency analysis of the various bits and bytes - not easy at scale. On the other hand, if it's an oft-posted image, a simple diff would show off any hidden messages very quickly.
  - pyre 13y ago
    > if it's an oft-posted image, a simple diff would show off any hidden messages very quickly. How would that scale though? Many 'oft-posted' images are modified by users for legitimate reasons. You would have to be able to figure out which changes were legitimate and which were hidden messages.
paganel 13y ago
> "I just like looking at pictures of cats on imgur" (while they actually contain handler's instructions Not sure how pervasive it has become, but the couple of Russian spies that was caught in Germany last year or so were also using comments on Cristiano Ronaldo YouTube videos to communicate with their contacts. From here (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10180131/Russia-seeks-spy-swap-for-married-couple-convicted-in-Germany.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1018...): > The middle-aged Anschlags, who pretended to be Austrians born in Argentina and Peru, used "dead letter drops" to communicate with their informers and then transmitted information to Moscow via satellite. Some messages were passed via coded comments on YouTube videos where Mrs Anschlag's online alias was Alpenkuh1 (Alpine cow 1