Encrypt Information In Images Without Distortion

Nomikos writes "C|Net reports: Researchers have created a new way to encrypt information in a digital image and extract it later without any distortion or loss of information. A team of scientists from Xerox and the University of Rochester said that the technique, called reversible data hiding, could be used in situations that require proof that an image has not been altered."

This has been done forever.

[packeteer]

People have been doing this for some time. You simply print out the data. Take a photo of it. Scanthe photo. Send the photo. No distortion of the image with the data on it.

Make Distortion Open Source

[Lieutenant_Dan]

I think the best way to improve the quality of the distortion is to make it Open Source. By providing easy access to vast quantities of distortion can the Open Source community developers reach new heights in the field of encryption.

Only when tapping into the enormous resources contained within the Open Source community of developers can we allow UHF signals to break the strangle-hold that digital television has on the lives of the average Brazilian.

porn

[Transient0]

So I'll finally be able to verify whether or not that's a REAL picture of Britney Spears getting it on with a dalmation?

SWEET!

mmmm

[standsolid]

mmmm... open-sourced-club encryption.... wait... not open-source.

Re:Holy Cow!! This Is Awesome!

[broken_bones]

Quoting packeteer:

Sheesh i feel dirty now that i have summed up the whole article because people post before they read it.

I find it amusing that you say this when your first post [slashdot.org] to this thread was at 10:29, just three minutes after the article was posted. You sure must read fast...

In other news...

[the_other_one]

The RIAA and MPAA have sponsored new legislation to make images illegal on the internet in the United States. Images have been known to carry illegal circumvention devices such as DECSS. Thus images in themselves are also potential circumvention devices under the DMCA.

Obligatory DMCA Reference

[no soup for you]

Do not attempt to reverse engineer or theorize about this encryption. They say it's encrypted, that's enough for you.

No fake Brittany or Seven of Nine!

[SunPin]

Now we can confirm the genuine naked pictures from those photoshopped ones...

Re:Encryption?

[heliocentric]

I don't think this quite gets the point across that you want it to, "I'm just a theta(n) person in a theta(log n) world." would work better;)

I'm not so sure you get the point I'm trying to make... Can you ever have an alg. that runs in less time than it takes to read in the entire input? I'm trying to make a statment about difficult demands placed by the world and what I think of my own abilities to keep going at the real physical limit, but it just doesn't match the expectations of the world.

I'm not saying I'm asymptotically similar to something - I'm just talking in the worst case that I'm bounded. I feel the world wants things done in an unrealistic time (in the worst case) and that I just can't seem to provide that...

manipulations

[telstar]

I've got a 1 pixel image. Can it detect when I rotate it 360 degrees and perform a mirror translation on it?

Telstar

But

[KidSock]

it's only worth a 1000 words.

Anyone else find it ironic...

[Grip3n]

That we're trying to prove an image hasn't been tampered with by tampering with the image?

Re:In other news...

[MadFarmAnimalz]

That's ok.

I use lynx. :-)

Encrypt Images In Information Without Distortion

[Harald74]

For all those collectors of illegal pr0n...

Re:I don't get it...

[McCart42]

The goal of steganography is to be one step better than encryption--not only can enemies not read the data, they don't even know there IS data being sent (at least not the data they were looking for). In other words:
Encryption: "These are not the droids you are looking for."
Steganography: "What droids? Those aren't droids, those are pictures of Britney Spears." (Perhaps this is a bad analogy.)

Thus, adding text to the end of an image, even encrypted, shows that you have something to hide. For dissidents in China, this means prison, until you reveal your passphrase--and then they'll probably kill you.

Re:This has been done forever.

[uncoveror]

What do we need this for anyway? It has already been reported that digital photographs cannot be faked. [uncoveror.com]