Recent comments in /f/Futurology

czl t1_jbcs10i wrote

My words above are:

>> Steganography can help security but it is not security.

To that you reply

> Wikipedia disagrees with you… Steganography is a form of security … Via obscurity

Obscurity can help security but it is not security is it? You know better than that to believe that so why do you reply to me with ‘Wikipedia disagrees with you’?

Here is what the wikipedia link you shared says:

>> Whereas cryptography is the practice of protecting the contents of a message alone, steganography is concerned with concealing the fact that a secret message is being sent and its contents.

Concealment can help you avoid detection but concealment does not offer protection does it? If someone has a gun a pile of leaves may conceal you but will it protect you? What do you suppose happens to those who confuse concealment for cover (which does offer protection)?

Do you genuinely not understand the difference between stenography vs cryptography and the different purposes (as Wikipedia explains) they have? Are you being disagreable on purpose to act like a troll? Why then are you being disagreable? What is your purpose?

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ImmoralityPet t1_jbcqx9l wrote

That's not what they're claiming though. The presence of a signal is known. The presence of a second message embedded in the signal is what is undetectable because the encoding process is embedded in probabilistic filters that the signal was subjected to anyway. And the output signal is indistinguishable from a signal that went through such a filter with no embedded message.

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Mindless_Consumer t1_jbcnplo wrote

If true - its actually a big deal.

Consider a hostile universe and we need to send a signal across the galaxy, the presence of a signal alone is enough information to get you xenocided. Being about to mask the existence of a signal will be vital.

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czl t1_jbcli5n wrote

> Steganography is used for security

Steganography is confused for security.

Steganography can help security but it is not security. It increases the work needed for discovery and only that.

Analogous to the difference between cover and concealment: "Cover is protection from the fire of hostile weapons. Concealment is protection from observation."

Steganography is like "concealment" but not like "cover". To have "cover" you need encryption. You can have one or the other or both.

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ImmoralityPet t1_jbckhzb wrote

That's what they're saying the advancement is here. The presence of the message is undetectable. The alterations that are done to the image are indistinguishable from other probabilistic filters that the file type is typically subjected to.

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Surfing_magic_carpet t1_jbckdgz wrote

I'd love for someone to get ahold of the Pegasus source code and alter it to get ahold of government officials' data. They want to spy on us, why shouldn't we return the favor?

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ImmoralityPet t1_jbck1cn wrote

>If you're altering a source file (by adding information, as in this example), it's detectable

Only if you have access to the original, unaltered file. And it's not the alteration that's undetectable, it's the fact that information was encoded using the alteration. That's why they describe using probabilistic filters to do the encoding.

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ghostcatzero t1_jbchpop wrote

Lol they have been had access to this lol. They likely made this. Been available to them for decade. We are just hearing about it now because they let us

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Internal-Tiger-7227 t1_jbchn19 wrote

There is no such thing as privacy. They watch us in our homes and have access to ALL of our shit in the cloud and elsewhere. Your tv watches YOU. There are pinhole cameras and electrical outlet cameras in hotels and everywhere else you go. I am not making this up. They’re sick voyeurs

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shponglespore t1_jbcffcx wrote

Obscurity should never be your only security measure, but it can still play an important role in your overall security strategy. You can and should encrypt anything you're hiding with steganography.

Also, steganography isn't really security through obscurity. That phrase generally refers to things like trying to keep a weak encryption algorithm secret because anyone who knows the algorithm has a huge head start on cracking it. Good crypto algorithms are designed to be secure even when an attacker knows exactly which algorithm was used.

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