NODE aae9f028Re: Standard for Steganography
wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)Thu, 3 Mar 94 17:10:21 PST
Jef Poskanzer writes:
> The problem is the length field - you've got to have it, and it's
> recognizeable because it begins with a run of 0s. [several hiding approaches.]
Actually, you don't really need it, at least for PGP. PGP messages keep
track of how much real stuff the message has, and ought to be able to
do the right thing if there's extra stuff at the end; I'd guess that
Stealth-PGP can do the same. I realize PGP isn't the only thing people
will want to hide, but most things need hiding have enough structure
to them thatpadding wiht garbage at the end is no problem.
On the other hand, if you do have a length field, you do have to
do something reasonable with it, and just putting it at the beginning
makes it difficult to do other stuff with the stego program,
like inserting text bitplanes into a picture....
Bill
NODE cd83224dRe: Standard for Steganography
Sergey Goldgaber <sergey@delbruck.pharm.sunysb.edu>Thu, 3 Mar 94 19:14:29 PST
On Thu, 3 Mar 1994 wcs@anchor.ho.att.com wrote:
> Jef Poskanzer writes:
> > The problem is the length field - you've got to have it, and it's
> > recognizeable because it begins with a run of 0s. [several hiding
> > approaches.]
> Actually, you don't really need it, at least for PGP. PGP messages keep
> track of how much real stuff the message has, and ought to be able to
> do the right thing if there's extra stuff at the end; I'd guess that
> Stealth-PGP can do the same. I realize PGP isn't the only thing people
> will want to hide, but most things need hiding have enough structure
> to them thatpadding wiht garbage at the end is no problem.
>
> On the other hand, if you do have a length field, you do have to
> do something reasonable with it, and just putting it at the beginning
> makes it difficult to do other stuff with the stego program,
> like inserting text bitplanes into a picture....
>
> Bill
>
Sorry to have to bring this up, but...
As some of the newbies have pointed out, in previous messages on this thread:
The length field, or any standard-length header scattered (standardly :)
through the beginning of the file will cost one no loss in security if it
is encrypted.
The encryption could easily be standardized via a public-key based
algorithm like PGP.
The stego-program could be kept simple by meerly having it call PGP to do
the header-encryption work.
Sergey