damn, it seems someone already did what I proposed a while ago under the thread "stego for the censored". if anyone in here has contacts to these terrorists, can you ask them for the software, please? maybe they want to GPL it so we can use it for other purposes as well? :) ----- Forwarded message from q/depesche <depesche@quintessenz.at> ----- Terror groups hide behind Web encryption By Jack Kelley, Usa Taoday WASHINGTON Hidden in the X-rated pictures on several pornographic Web sites and the posted comments on sports chat rooms may lie the encrypted blueprints of the next terrorist attack against the United States or its allies. It sounds farfetched, but U.S. officials and experts say it's the latest method of communication being used by Osama bin Laden and his associates to outfox law enforcement. Bin Laden, indicted in the bombing in 1998 of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, and others are hiding maps and photographs of terrorist targets and posting instructions for terrorist activities on sports chat rooms, pornographic bulletin boards and other Web sites, U.S. and foreign officials say. [...] ----- End forwarded message -----
At 10:25 AM +0100 2/7/01, Tom wrote:
damn, it seems someone already did what I proposed a while ago under the thread "stego for the censored". if anyone in here has contacts to these terrorists, can you ask them for the software, please? maybe they want to GPL it so we can use it for other purposes as well? :)
Not that I want to claim credit for this use by terrorists, but you will find that I wrote about this precise use in the late 80s. The Kevin Kelly book, "Out of Control," had a long description of this kind of use, based on interviews he did with me in 1992. And, of course, in 1992 there were numerous posts on this in Cypherpunks, by me and by others. The Apple consultant Romana Machado took these discussions and generated a little program she called "Stego," which put simple messages into GIF files. At least a couple of other stego programs were in use around this time, too. (This was circa 1993.) From the "U.S.A. Today" article, I believe _someone_ has been reading my articles from back then. They even refer to this stego use as "digital dead drops," a term I was using almost 10 years ago. (It was utterly obvious to me, and perhaps to others, that the old dead drop of depositing written messages in Coke cans and leaving them at the base of oak trees was too low tech to take seriously. The bandwidth of the Net, and the vast number of places to tuck information unobtrusively, made it an obvious place for dead drops.) And, as a matter of fact, when I was looking into this kind of stuff, there were already reports that a Mafia guy on the run was using the bulletin boards of the time to communicate with his wife and perhaps other associtates. He would log in to an obscure BBS or chat room of the day (I think it was on Compuserve) and leave simply-coded messages. A digital dead drop. --Tim May --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
I wonder if they're using PGP stealth 2 that I contributed to based on Henry Hastur's 1. It's kind of interesting to see these things used in the field. However one suspects unless they had some hired security consultants it may be that they just used the stego programs such as Andy Brown's or Romano's stego program with raw messages. Or perhaps using PGP without PGP stealth. Also you've got to wonder if the whole thing is some spook public opnion manipulation attempt. And then there's the question of how they found out. Did they get a tip-off and find the person stegoing the messages into the porn? Or was the stego not that well done and the result didn't provide plausible deniability, so they could remotely confirm their informant based suspicions. Adam On Wed, Feb 07, 2001 at 09:05:03AM -0800, Tim May wrote:
At 10:25 AM +0100 2/7/01, Tom wrote:
damn, it seems someone already did what I proposed a while ago under the thread "stego for the censored". if anyone in here has contacts to these terrorists, can you ask them for the software, please? maybe they want to GPL it so we can use it for other purposes as well? :)
Adam Back wrote:
Also you've got to wonder if the whole thing is some spook public opnion manipulation attempt. And then there's the question of how they found out. Did they get a tip-off and find the person stegoing the messages into the porn? Or was the stego not that well done and the result didn't provide plausible deniability, so they could remotely confirm their informant based suspicions.
it's likely the first. though it WOULD be ironic if omar and a bunch of other terrorists read the papers and start thinking "now THAT'S a good idea"...
On Wed, Feb 07, 2001 at 08:18:31PM -0400, Adam Back wrote:
I wonder if they're using PGP stealth 2 that I contributed to based on Henry Hastur's 1. It's kind of interesting to see these things used in the field.
However one suspects unless they had some hired security consultants it may be that they just used the stego programs such as Andy Brown's or Romano's stego program with raw messages. Or perhaps using PGP without PGP stealth.
Also you've got to wonder if the whole thing is some spook public opnion manipulation attempt. And then
Right. Prominent articles in USA Today and eslewhere, followed by front-page LA Times article, followed by the Fidel Castro cyberterror hearing on Wed. There's a pattern. -Declan
On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Right. Prominent articles in USA Today and eslewhere, followed by front-page LA Times article, followed by the Fidel Castro cyberterror hearing on Wed.
There's a pattern.
Yah. A pretty blatant one. I'm wondering though why they're concentrating on international threats and political crap instead of more domestic threats. For example, considering how lucrative an aggressive program of corporate espionage and selective capital investment could be, and how relatively risk-free compared to cruder uses of inside information such as blackmail and extortion, I'd be astonished if there were nobody out there right now doing it. But people like that are not being brought to our attention. Bear
Ray Dillinger wrote:
There's a pattern.
Yah. A pretty blatant one. I'm wondering though why they're concentrating on international threats and political crap instead of more domestic threats.
let's take a guess: the kind and source of the alleged threat depends on - the TLA that is looking for additional funds?
On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
Also you've got to wonder if the whole thing is some spook public opnion manipulation attempt. And then
Right. Prominent articles in USA Today and eslewhere, followed by front-page LA Times article, followed by the Fidel Castro cyberterror hearing on Wed.
There's a pattern.
I think it is an attempt to frighten all those green senators and gullible congress critters. (I noticed Wyden got a good soundbite. Wyden has done some good, but he falls for some of the DUMBEST scams. Well meaning, but gullible.) I wonder if budget requests are due soon. alan@ctrl-alt-del.com | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply Alan Olsen | to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys. "In the future, everything will have its 15 minutes of blame."
At 09:05 AM 2/7/01 -0800, Tim May wrote:
At 10:25 AM +0100 2/7/01, Tom wrote:
damn, it seems someone already did what I proposed a while ago under the thread "stego for the censored". if anyone in here has contacts to these terrorists, can you ask them for the software, please? maybe they want to GPL it so we can use it for other purposes as well? :)
Not that I want to claim credit for this use by terrorists, but you will find that I wrote about this precise use in the late 80s. The Kevin Kelly book, "Out of Control," had a long description of this kind of use, based on interviews he did with me in 1992.
And, of course, in 1992 there were numerous posts on this in Cypherpunks, by me and by others. The Apple consultant Romana Machado took these discussions and generated a little program she called "Stego," which put simple messages into GIF files. At least a couple of other stego programs were in use around this time, too. (This was circa 1993.)
I know this has been mentioned before, but it seems to me that we should make use of all the great CRM watermarking technologies being developed. One of the primary goals of such technology is to hide the watermark in such a way that it cannot be isolated from the source material or removed by copying or filtering without making reproduction of the source material unacceptably degraded. At MacCrypto BlueSpike http://www.bluespike.com/ gave an good talk on this and my mind has been considering the stego uses of CRM ever since. To the degree such technologies deliver on these aspects of their CRM mandate they may serve the needs of clandestine communications. steve
On Fri, 9 Feb 2001, Steve Schear wrote:
I know this has been mentioned before, but it seems to me that we should make use of all the great CRM watermarking technologies being developed. One of the primary goals of such technology is to hide the watermark in such a way that it cannot be isolated from the source material or removed by copying or filtering without making reproduction of the source material unacceptably degraded.
However, methods used for watermarking et cetera are not optimized for strict non-detection. What I mean is, they are of course meant to be difficult to predict down to the sample level (since that would make them easy to remove), but the presence of this sort of stego is often quite easily verified. Especially if the algorithms are well known. This is unacceptable in a non-watermark stego apps. Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
participants (8)
-
Adam Back -
Alan Olsen -
Declan McCullagh -
Ray Dillinger -
Sampo Syreeni -
Steve Schear -
Tim May -
Tom