STEG: a real-life use for steganography

Phil Karn karn at qualcomm.com
Mon Feb 7 23:10:43 PST 1994


The biggest problem I see with your scheme is that it won't remain secret
for very long, and the government will probably just ban all CD imports
as a result. And possession of a CD player or CDs (even "legit" ones)
would be enough to send you off to kamp.

> -- A decryption system to get the data off the CD.

There's a practical problem here. Audio CD players generally provide
no easy way to get the raw bits into a computer (SPDIF interface cards
exist for PCs, but they're rare and expensive). And I haven't yet
figured out how to get a CD-ROM drive to read the raw bits off an
audio CD; I suspect it requires munging the firmware in the drive,
which makes anything you do highly manufacturer specific.

Phil






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