Guymon

Stegobot

Spannend:

We propose the construction of an unobservable communications network using social networks. The communication endpoints are vertices on a social network. Probabilistically unobservable communication channels are built by leveraging image steganography and the social image sharing behavior of users. All communication takes place along the edges of a social network overlay connecting friends. We show that such a network can provide decent bandwidth even with a far from optimal routing mechanism such as restricted flooding. We show that such a network is indeed usable by constructing a botnet on top of it, called Stegobot. It is designed to spread via social malware attacks and steal information from its victims. Unlike conventional botnets, Stegobot traffic does not introduce new communication endpoints between bots. We analyzed a real-world dataset of image sharing between members of an online social network. Analysis of Stegobot’s network throughput indicates that stealthy as it is, it is also functionally powerful — capable of channeling fair quantities of sensitive data from its victims to the botmaster at tens of megabytes every month.

Technology Review hat auch etwas darüber.

Embed a TrueCrypt Volume Video File

lifehacker erklärt wie man ein TrueCrypt Volume in einem (abspielbaren) Video versteckt. Cool Stuff!

First you need a suitable mp4 file to hide your TrueCrypt container. (…) Really any mp4 file will do, but try to find a file that matches the proportional size of the container you are going to create. Once you have your video file, create a TrueCrypt container. Use the “Hidden Container” option, this generates a container-inside-a-container. (…) Now that you have your two files, the magic happens. Martin Fiedler, a software engineer from Germany, created a Python script named tcsteg.py that will now merge these two files together. Execute “python tcsteg.py Movie.mp4 NameOfTrueCryptVolume.mp4” from a command line to make the merge.

Social Steganography

Interesting:

Social steganography is one privacy tactic teens take when engaging in semi-public forums like Facebook. While adults have worked diligently to exclude people through privacy settings, many teenagers have been unable to exclude certain classes of adults – namely their parents – for quite some time. For this reason, they’ve had to develop new techniques to speak to their friends fully aware that their parents are overhearing. Social steganography is one of the most common techniques that teens employ. They do this because they care about privacy, they care about misinterpretation, they care about segmented communications strategies. And they know that technical tools for restricting access don’t trump parental demands to gain access. So they find new ways of getting around limitations. And, in doing so, reconstruct age-old practices.

Hiding Files in PDF Documents

Netter Trick: Embedding and Hiding Files in PDF Documents.

Das Python Script gibt es hier. Und nein, das ist keine sichere Methode um Daten zu verstecken, aber eben ein netter kleiner Trick.

Steganography Tools

Sean-Philip Oriyano stellt einige Steganography Tools vor.

Steganography is an old and incredibly versatile and effective technique for obscuring information that is actually in plain sight. Although methods for detecting hidden data do exist, they cannot be entirely relied upon, as none is 100 percent effective. Any attempt to detect and thwart this technique must combine technology and vigilance to blunt the effectiveness of the process.