Blocking Steganosonic Data In Phone Calls 185
psyced writes "Steganography is a technique to encode secret messages in the background noise of an audio recording or photograph. There have been attempts at steganalysis in the past, but scientists at FH St. Pölten are developing strategies to block out secret data in VoIP and even GSM phone calls by preemptively modifying background noise (link is to a Google translation of the German original) on a level that stays inaudible or invisible, yet destroys any message encoded within. I wonder if this method could be applied to hiding messages in executables, too."
Yes, you can, sort of. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can I add random noise to a .exe file...? (Score:2, Informative)
Additionally you can use empty areas in executable formats, in the headers or padding. Or even add an extra data segment... If file size is no issue, you can typically just concatenate some extra data in the end of file.
However, instruction sequence alteration might be the closest option in executable "steganography", because data in the headers or padding sticks out like a sore thumb.
Re:Not going to work.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Or.. (Score:4, Informative)
cmp eax, edx
jle offset
to
cmp edx, eax
jae offset
(insert your own variation here). Have a program read all cmp eax, edx (or cmp edx, eax) opcodes and output 0 for the first and 1 for the second.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not going to work.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not going to work.... (Score:3, Informative)
a.) The project is a feasibility evaluation, and as such doesn't have to produce results.
b.) The Austrian Ministry of Defence is supporting this project.
This isn't even remotely like DARPA, so chill out
Re:Not going to work.... (Score:3, Informative)
I couldn't read TFA as Google translation was hung, but I question the summary's definition of steganography as hiding data in the "background noise".
If you read wikipedia's steganography entry [wikipedia.org], you'll see no mention of background/foreground noise in the definition. My understanding is that steganography generally alters the lowest order bits in a audio/video/image files so that pixels/samples are indistinguishably altered. Trivial example with RGB values...you will probably not notice the difference between #FFFFFF and #FEFEFE or #FFFEFF, so if you simply overwrite the lowest bit of each R, G and B value with the data you wish to hide, you can store 3 bits per RGB pixel without visibly changing the appearance of the image. At least in this instance, background/foreground noise is not part of the equation.
The only reason it might make sense to focus on background noise is if they are only looking to embed a message in the actual analog audio signal; for instance, clicks and pops sequenced in such a way as to be decipherable as data. That seems to me like a pretty narrow avenue to focus on, and I wonder if anyone is even known to use such a method these days.
Re:Not going to work.... (Score:2, Informative)