USA Today reports that terrorists are using the web to organize their jihad, utilizing sophisticated stegonography and encryption techniques to avoid detection.
A pair of researchers from Ben Gurion University in Israel have come up with a way to hide an image within a printed picture, allowing hard copies of an image to retain hidden information. The scheme hides one half-tone picture in another so that scanners like those in supermarkets can unlock and view the information. The technique could be used to hide barcodes in product labels and fingerprints in ID pictures.
A new steganography-based technique hides barcodes inside pictures and could help create forgery-proof identity documents.
Andy Carvin of the Benton Foundation reviews the practice and history of steganography, the science of hiding secret messages in publicly accessible material. He argues that there is insufficient proof that terrorists are using steganography to communicate to justify legislation restricting its use.
The investigation of the terrorist attacks on the United States is drawing new attention to a stealthy method of sending messages through the Internet. The method, called steganography, can hide messages in digital photographs or in music files but leave no outward trace that the files were altered.
The terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks may have communicated over the Internet using a computer version of invisible ink that allows secret messages to be concealed in image and music files. Western intelligence officials say they have learned that instructors at Osama bin Laden's camps in remote Afghanistan train his followers in the high-tech secret-messaging technique.
New research indicates that terrorists are not using advanced computer tools to hide messages in innocuous-looking web images.
John Horvath argues against calls to search the internet for terrorist use of steganography because by invoking the evils of terrorism, the government is able to justify "the loss of privacy and a state of surveillance [society] would otherwise not accept."
U.S. officials say Osama bin Laden is posting instructions for terrorist activities on sports chat rooms, pornographic bulletin boards and other Web sites.