Well, of course there's the famous B-A-C-H that Bach encoded towards the end of Art of the Fugue, written right before he died. (H in Germany is the same as our B, I think, and B in Germany is our B-flat, but don't quote me, it may be the other way around.) There're tons of others in the history of Western music. I'd bet there's a book or two on the subject somewhere. -TD

From: Thomas Shaddack <shaddack@ns.arachne.cz> To: cypherpunks <cypherpunks@lne.com> Subject: Steganography and musical scores? Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 09:27:20 +0200 (CEST)

See also something about computer-generated music: http://brainop.media.mit.edu/online/net-music/net-instrument/Thesis.html

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 03:13:00 EDT Subject: Cryptography-Digest Digest #978 From: Digestifier <Cryptography-Digest-Request@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu> To: Cryptography-Digest@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu

<irrelevant ones snipped>

Subject: Historical Evidence or Possibility of Steganography in Music From: Mark Lybrand <nunya@spamstopper.com> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 03:31:47 GMT

I was wondering if anyone here might guide me to any reference material regarding the possibility or actual occurrence of information having been steganographically hidden in musical scores.

If this is the wrong NG to post this to, please correct me.

TIA

Mark

------------------------------

From: Richard Heathfield <dontmail@address.co.uk.invalid> Subject: Re: Historical Evidence or Possibility of Steganography in Music Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 06:26:02 +0000 (UTC)

Mark Lybrand wrote:

...

I was wondering if anyone here might guide me to any reference material regarding the possibility or actual occurrence of information having been steganographically hidden in musical scores.

Sorry, I don't have any formal references for you about hiding information in music. Nevertheless, I know it's happened, because I have done it myself, in the mid-1980s. Not only that, but it survived a cryptanalytic attack from somebody who was 99% sure that the music contained a message but was unable to work out how that message was encoded.

Some time in the 1990s, I read in good old Readers' Digest of a war-time incident in which musical notation was used for encryption; this nearly got a man killed when he was asked by the Germans to play the music. He was able to shrug off the cacophony as "this modern music", and got away with it. How true this account is, I don't know.

I don't know why they didn't do what I did, which is to insert musical padding into the score to maintain some semblance of melody.

It's an expensive method of steganography, though, since you really do have to compose your own tunes. The problem with saving time by using existing scores is that their composition (if you will forgive the term) is public knowledge, and so a comparison with the original will reveal the significant differences. The only way around this is to prevent such a comparison, and the only certain way to do that is to compose your own tunes.

You might be able to automate the padding, if your computer is soulful enough. :-)

-- Richard Heathfield : binary@eton.powernet.co.uk "Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999. C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton

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