[These results, alas, aren't as interesting as they could be. I urge Greg to broaden the search. The article in question (http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-05-binladen.htm) never mentioned eBay, so analyzing eBay images isn't that helpful. The article talked of: "sports chat rooms, pornographic bulletin boards and other Web sites." Seems to me that in debates, we should assume that Bin Laden is using crypto and stego, and frame our responses accordingly. If he isn't, the next generation certainly will. --DBM] ********* From: "Greg Schnippel" <schnippyat_private> To: <declanat_private> Subject: FOR POLITECH: Study finds low use of steganography on the web Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 00:50:06 -0400 Declan - Thought this might be interest to your readers, especially considering the currrent debate in Congress to outlaw encryption and steganography products. In contrast to earlier reports from USA Today that Bin Laden was using steganography, a technique that allows the user to concel a message in a document or image, to conceal maps and secret messages a new study from the University of Michigan finds no widespread use of steganography on the web. Of course, they only searched 2 million images on Ebay. They are going to conduct a similar search on USENET next. I'm waiting for someone to convert this into a distibuted computing project like 'SETI@home' but "hunt-bin-laden@home" :) Possible, but lots of legal and practical questions to be answered. Full study is here: http://www.citi.umich.edu/techreports/reports/citi-tr-01-11.pdf USA Today article: http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-05-binladen.htm -Greg Schnippel ------------------------------------------------------ New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991340 Massive search reveals no secret code in web images 15:56 25 September 01 Will Knight New research indicates that terrorists are not using advanced computer tools to hide messages in innocuous-looking web images. ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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