CDR: Re: stego for the censored

Ray Dillinger bear at sonic.net
Sat Oct 7 08:45:09 PDT 2000





>>On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Tom Vogt wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm currently thinking of whether or not it is feasable to put stego
>>>data into EVERY .mp3 downloaded. just put random data into those not
>>>intended to carry a message.
>
On Fri, 6 Oct 2000, Ray Dillinger wrote:

>>You're talking
>>about making the audio channels a bit (more or less) thinner, but
>>they're too thin already.

On Sat, 7 Oct 2000, petro wrote:
>
>	But if you make them a little "thinner" won't that mean that it 
>will sound worse to more people, thus making the push for a better 
>format?

Um, possibly if *all* MP3's were made with stegodata. If there 
is *one* source of MP3's that's stego'd and a bunch of other 
people trying to make them sound as good as possible, the one 
supplier with consistently poor sound quality will stand out 
when someone goes looking for stegograms.

One thing, which you pointed out in a comment I snipped above, 
is that some music adapts better to MP3 compression than other 
music.  There is plenty of room for stegodata in synthesizer-
pop bands like "Yes" and "The Eurythmics", but almost none 
in layered atmospheric music like "Enya".  If you pick and 
choose which plaintexts to stego, you can probably be less 
obtrusive about it. 

				Bear









More information about the cypherpunks-legacy mailing list