Stenography: The Secret Art of Hidden Information

Stenography is a beautiful art that I greatly admire, and have used many times. It is both the art and the science of writing, drawing, or placing hidden messages onto something at such a way that no one can ever decipher or figure them out except for the author, and the individual or audience that it's intended for.

Stenography has been used as far back as 440 BC when Demaratus created a message about an attack upon Greece. He wrote it onto a wax tablet, and then applied a wax surface to conceal it. A common though primitive example of stenography are tattoos...which have meaning to the owner and the ones who know about them, but may be just a strange picture upon someone's arm or back to others. Even earlier than the Greek use, there have been several dated messages found and embedded within the hieroglyphics of ancient Egyptian monuments.

Although partially related, stenography should not be confused with cryptography and it should be understood that they are two totally separate things. While cryptography is the encryption (or obfuscation) of a message to ensure that no one except the intended recipient can decipher it, there is always a message right there in plain-sight with cryptography (and in most cases you have that message at your fingertips to work with IF you want to try to successfully break the code).

Stenography however, does not necessarily have to employ any of the methods that cryptography does to keep its message safe. A stenographic message can be plain text, an image, or anything else at all, in its (nearly) original and (almost) unmodified form. It does not have to be changed at any way to present its original element to the beholder. Its primary strength exists in its ability to seem just like the original, unmodified version of something as it camoflauges itself with the visual, auditory, and sensory perception used by humans to perceive the world around them. Amazingly enough, the art of stenography is vulnerable only to creative intelligence and idealistic analytics, while it is cloaked entirely by everyday human normalcy and typical human ignorance!

Throughout latter parts of this world's history, the Egyptians and the Greeks were not the only ones to make use of stenography. During World War 2 for example, the French sent messages upon the backs of couriers using ink that was invisible to the naked eye.

Fraternal societies, such as those among the Free Masonic Brotherhood, will at times make use of stenography through the use of symbols and designs which ensure that instructions and educational elements (and the privacy thereof) remains intact and available for members only.

Stenography has a variety of uses, from communication to protection of information and the shielding of sensitive things from those who might affect or even destroy the creation or invention of something beneficial. It can only be as strong as its creator's envision and determination to conceal it.

Stenography was used during World War 2 by spies and by agents on each side of the war, from the Japanese and the Germans to the Russians and Americans...from civilians to prisoners of war...there were all sorts of hidden codes that were transmitted in a variety of fashions. Of course, that was for war, and war was bad right?

So...how does one go about designing a stenographic message?

Feel free to use your imagination. Quite literally!

A personal example of stenography for a good cause:

Did you know that when I was 16, I once wrote the answers to a test out for a friend in plain sight when I was in high school? I had good reason to do so. It was a multiple choice test that I had already taken and passed successfully, and they needed help. They did not have time left to study, and if they did not pass their test, they were going to have to take the entire class over next semester. I just happened to have a study-hall that year for one period during the time they had their class. So what I did was this: I called my friend the night before, and told them I was making a t-shirt with iron-on decals. I informed them that the red letters would be the answers to the test (but purposely mislabeled 2 letters differently to ensure that my friend did not get a "perfect score" which might have been suspicious, since the teacher knew that they had been struggling with the course. I told them about this, and they agreed). My shirt was an interesting collage of words that said: "Positive thinking yields progress", and underneath it, it had words of positivity that either conveniently started with or had red letters where they needed to be. When I walked in to the classroom from my study-hall on a bathroom pass, my friend immediately began to look at my shirt and write down every "red" letter that they saw.

The words were spread out across my shirt, the letters were different sizes and colors for each word...but only one letter of each word was red, and all were arranged chronologically from top to bottom. I had to leave after the teacher dismissed me...looked at my friend and put up my finger as if to say: "one moment". I returned a few moments later and asked the teacher if I had dropped my keys anywhere. I walked around the classroom, close enough to my friend's desk still that he could see every word on my shirt. I watched the classroom flip their papers over while still pretending to search for my keys. I looked back at my friend to see if he was still with me. He shrugged and kept flipping his paper over (as if to show me that he was now on side 2 and needed to know what came next). So I pulled the keys out of my pocket, dropped them on the ground, and told the teacher that I found them and thanked her for her help. I then acted like I was looking at posters and papers on the wall, with my back turned so that every letter for side 2 was visible to my friend.

When the teacher suggested I return to study hall and stop wasting my time in her class that I could be doing homework, I agreed and said I would leave after tying my shoe. So I bought my friend a few more minutes by keeping my back turned awkwardly toward the wall, and standing up holding my leg to tie my shoe. By the time the teacher asked me what on earth I was doing there for so long trying to tie my shoe, I mumbled something incoherently to her about the length of the laces and my needing to get new shoes. She raised her eyebrow and rolled her eyes at me and told me to return to study hall because they needed their bathroom pass back. I agreed, turned and smiled at the class as I made eye contract with my friend who was now smiling and nodding.

At the risk of looking like a fool or at best a total freak with nothing better to do...my friend was able to use the information I posted onto my shirt, understood the differential color-coding technique, and was able to successfully pass their test with a 93%. They ended up giving me money that I never asked them to...but I decided that I did need new shoes after all since my shoe laces really were quite awkward...so it was money well spent. But most importantly this was a successful service for a friend in need, and a short but sweet demonstration of how you can use stenography in plain sight, even in the midst of danger, to communicate with those who know the secret (or secrets) to understand it.

Stenography does not have to be visual, though. It does not have to be encoded onto letters or numbers, either. It does not have to be like symbols upon the US dollar, and it does not even need to be permanently recorded at times. Sometimes, a one-time broadcasting is enough to send the intended message to recipients and then leave no trace of its existence. A message can be embedded with sounds. A message can be made with sensible textures that you can feel. A message can even be sent stenographically with music or spoken words during a live or recorded performance. In the song "Umbrella" by Rhianna, feel free to read those lyrics, and tell me whether you see some stenographic properties in things coming "down with the dow" and other aspects of a hidden message? Perhaps it is only recognizable to those who might understand it in the full context of the song, and it is only for those who know what the song's true meaning is about. But I'm sure that the general public has to have heard it and possibly wondered?

Now, it is very important to be careful that you also understand the full message of a stenographic portrayal before you jump to conclusions, too. Otherwise, you might receive only part of the right message, or a slight misunderstanding of one or two little things which can turn into several bigger things later. It's important that you always understand what you are reading, seeing, sensing, and feeling. Sometimes a perceptive individual is able to see (naturally or artificially) part or most of a stenographic message for whatever reason...but they overlooked an important part of it only to find that the message is close or (if worse comes to worst) opposite of what the message should have been. I encourage you to seek out and complete such a message should you come across one and want to know it's meaning...but I also ask that you ensure (for yourself and for others) that you are entirely correct about the results of your findings as much as is humanly possible.

Of course, stenography can be done on computers with graphical images, too. You could modify a stray pixel at a certain interval (for example, alter every 13th or 33rd pixel of a photograph by +39 or -39 intensity to embed a value or a message). You could pack information at the end of a file (since most files read from beginning to end, whether they are mp3 music files, mpeg video files, or anything else. Very rarely do files read from the end of the file to the beginning, and most files have a termination byte or end of file marker which terminates the reading of data before it ever gets to your encoded message). There are a variety of ways to do this with nearly every file format and any streamed implementation imaginable on a computer. The sky is the limit.

The detection of digital stenography is known as Steganalysis. Often times, steganalysis is reliant upon being able to make contrasts or comparisons to an original source to determine differential values and other differences, but that isn't always possible.

Mathematical encryption combined with stenography can make messages difficult and sometimes impossible to detect. You can make your own digital stenographic messages and transmissions online with pictures using a very straight-forward and easy to use site called Mosaiq:

Use this link to encrypt an image: http://mozaiq.org/encrypt/
Use this link to decrypt an image: http://mozaiq.org/decrypt/

You can create a password for an image to ensure that most people won't be able to see what the message is. If you need to send a relatively private message to someone, you can use this. If you need some pretty heavy duty message privacy, then you'll more than likely want to rely upon things like PGP (pretty good privacy, a freeware cryptography product), or use a combination of stenography in pictures to send part of a message, and cryptography to send the rest of it over the medium you choose. On the above site, the files are limited to PNG (portable network graphic format, savable and editable commonly with Macromedia Fireworks and similar programs like GIMP) or the BMP format (which can be edited with mspaint on nearly every windows system since windows 3.1).

Remember that there are such things as trojans, keyloggers which capture keystrokes, rootkits, and other remote threats. While stenography, cryptography, and extreme security measures are all important and imperative measures to keep data and information as safe as possible from others that you don't want to see it...there are always risks and ways to get information via alternative means. Before you try to secure your digital information from the outside, always make sure that you have first secured it completely without compromise from the in.

This article on stenography is to help you know and explore the many ways that you can create messages in plain sight, and give you ideas on how you can implement such things with the best of intentions. Whatever you decide to do with stenography and/or cryptography, I wish you the best in your research and endeavors.