def'n of "computer network"

[rick hoselton]

imsi.com!perry ("Perry E. Metzger") writes:


>My opinion is that stegonography "standards" are useless. 
> Anyone can
>try unpeeling the GIFs and see if something interesting shows up
>inside. That means that the only useful stego suffers from the defect
>that symmetric key cryptography suffers from -- you have to have made
>serious pre-arrangements with the counterparty.

Perry, I don't understand.  If the least significant bits in my gif file
follow all the "known statistical distributions", how can anyone know 
whether they are "just noise" or are an encrypted message, (asymmetric or 
symmetric, either one) unless they have the key?  Why can't there be public 
key steganography?  Perhaps existing tools are inadequate, but are they
impossible?  
Rick F. Hoselton  (who doesn't claim to present opinions for others)