Local television station WBOY visits Backbone Security's Steganography Analysis
and Research Center to report on our tools capabilities and recent international
market entry awards from West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, III.
Click here to watch this video. (Windows Media Format)
In an interview at the 2008 Computer Forensics Show, James Wingate talks about the
state-of-the-art steganalysis products provided by the SARC.
Click here to watch
this video. (YouTube)
In an interview at the 2006 Techno Forensics Conference, James Wingate talks about
the current threat of steganography.
Click here to watch this video. (Windows Media Format)
In an interview at the 2006 Techno Security Conference, Chad W. Davis answers questions
about emerging trends in IT security.
Click here
to watch this video. (Windows Media Format)
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06/29/2010:
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Busted Alleged Russian Spies Used Steganography To Conceal Communications
- Dark Reading
"In a case that smacks of a Cold War spy novel, the FBI has arrested 11 suspected
Russian spies who for years had blended into day-to-day American life in the suburbs
and cities. Aside from hiding their true identities and posing as legitimate American
citizens, the suspects also masked their communications with their intelligence
agency back home in Moscow, using an oft-forgotten form of stealth communication
-- steganography."
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03/11/2010:
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Al Qaida:
Hiding in Plain Sight - Federal News Radio 1500 AM
"With the almost daily killing and capture of key personnel in Pakistan, Al Qaida
is being forced to communicate in a completely different way. "Electronic dead-drops,"
says Army Reserve Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer,
are what Al Qaida is relying on since couriers and so many foot soldiers are being
rolled up. So how are these dead drops happening? "Steganography in photographs
is a good example of a dead drop," according to Shaffer."
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02/08/2010:
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Vice Over IP: The VoIP Steganography Threat - IEEE Spectrum
"Steganography use is on the rise, and not just among criminals, hackers, child
pornographers, and terrorists. Persecuted citizens and dissidents under authoritarian
regimes use it to evade government censorship, and journalists can use it to conceal
sources. Investigators even use it on occasion to bait and trap people involved
in industrial espionage. Steganography is evolving alongside technology. Now steganography
has entered a new era, with stupendously greater potential for mischief. With the
latest techniques, the limitations on the length of the message have basically been
removed."
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12/01/2009:
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Steganography: Future of Information Hiding - Research And Markets
"Steganography Offers Bright Prospects for Commercial Data Hiding. As steganography
continues on its evolutionary path researchers have unearthed new platforms where
steganographic techniques could be employed to hide information seamlessly. As the
possibility of steganography being used with predominantly malicious intent is high,
enterprises and national security organizations need to recognize the threats posed
by steganography and implement the right countermeasures. Government and security
enterprises must take the lead and implement measures to increase the awareness
about steganography. Industry leaders need to work with researchers and channel
their R&D efforts toward development of effective technologies/solutions that would
provide substantial benefits."
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07/01/2009:
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Large and small enterprises are facing a number of issues when it comes to forensic
investigations - SC Magazine
"Another trend with which practitioners need to keep abreast is a continued rise
in the use of hiding and wiping technologies, being dubbed as 'anti-forensics.'
Steganography, in which data is hidden in image, MP3, Office and other file types,
is on the rise outside the United States, according to Chris Novak, managing principal
of the forensics and investigative response unit of Verizon Business."
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05/26/2009:
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Fake Web Traffic Can Hide Secret Chat - New Scientist
"The internet's underlying technology can be harnessed to let people exchange secret
messages, perhaps allowing free speech an outlet in oppressive regimes."
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01/23/2009:
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Defeating E-Discovery Enterprise Search Tools - Digital
Forensic Investigator News News
"It’s easy. All one has to do is use any of the more than 1,000 digital steganography
applications available as freeware or shareware on the Internet to hide information
that the current generation of e-discovery tools will not detect."
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12/01/2008
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Digital Insider:
Anti-Digital Forensics, The Next Challenge - Forensic Magazine News
"Examiners need to look for the presence of steganography tools on the suspect’s
computer. If no tools are discovered, possibly their artifacts can be found in the
registery. To aid in this process, there are some commercially available tools that
can detect the presence of steganography applications and their artifacts."
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10/31/2008:
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Steganography is key ingredient to anti-forensics - Infosecurity
News
"Anti-forensics tools are being used more frequently by cyber-criminals to cover
their tracks and to prevent monitoring, said Christopher Novak of Verizon business’
investigation response team, at track session ‘Cyber CSI: How criminals manipulate
anti-forensics to foil the crime scene’ at RSA Europe on 28 October. The use of
steganography (the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that
only the sender and intended recipient know there is a hidden message) is very easy
for a forensic investigator to overlook, said Novak, and is thus becoming popular
with cyber-criminals. 'The most important thing to remember', Novak concluded, 'is
that it’s dangerous to speed up an investigation; you need to take your time. Anti-forensics
is moving away from avoidance to being caught into an attack on the investigators.
It’s important to call in the professionals when you feel that anti-forensics have
been used'."
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10/17/2008:
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Link between child porn and Muslim terrorists discovered in police raids
- Times Online
"Secret coded messages are being embedded into child pornographic images, and paedophile
websites are being exploited as a secure way of passing information between terrorists."
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05/30/2008:
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Secret
messages could be hidden in net phone calls - TMCnet.com
"The next time your internet (VoIP) phone call sounds a bit fuzzy, it might not
be your ISP that's to blame. Someone could be trying to squeeze a secret message
between the packets of data carrying the caller's voice."
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05/05/2008:
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When terrorism hits cyberspace - MSN Technology
"Steganography is the technique to fully hide actual content within legitimate or
legitimate-looking) data. Terrorists can easily hide vital and sensitive communications
by mixing it with large amounts of public data. Seemingly normal files can have
embedded secret message data that will appear usual to an innocent observer. An
example is hiding messages within the noise of a digital image, in which some bits
that make up the image are used to encode a secret message without altering the
image significantly. The technology has now expanded to nearly all kinds of file
including audio and video recordings. The expertise to search through thousands
of files filtering through the Internet every second for such encoding is at present
beyond the resources of any government."
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3/10/2008:
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Hello Kitty used as drug lord's messenger: report - Agence France-Presse
"Hello Kitty, the Japanese cartoon figure popular with teenagers around the world,
was used by a notorious Colombian drug lord to hide messages to his minions, according
to a report Monday. Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, who is being held in Brazil after
his arrest in August, hid voice and text messages digitally encoded into e-mailed
images of the innocent feline, Brazilian police told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper."
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10/12/2007:
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CA Internet
Security Report Forecasts Top Online Threats for 2008 - CA.com
Number 2: "Smarter malware: There are new levels of sophistication in malware. Malware
will target virtualized computers, and increasing use of obfuscation techniques
to hide in plain sight, including steganography and encryptions, will help criminals
conceal their activities."
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10/12/2007:
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Data leak: Cyber sherlocks outwit hackers - The Economic
Times
"This was a clear cut case of an insider fishing for confidential data. He used
a technique called ‘steganography’ which enabled him to encrypt and send data inside
music and picture files using third-party steganography software. The information
was locked using a password and the person receiving the data used the same password
to decrypt the information. This person used virtual machine software for this task
to install a totally new Operating System within the existing OS and then the steganography
software did the trick. He was caught after an elaborate investigation process."
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08/21/2007:
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Al-Qaida spreads across the Web - NBC Nightly News
"Internet jihadists hide their messages with pirated encryption software and steganography,
a technology that embeds messages into photographs making them undetectable."
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08/16/2007:
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Anti-Forensic Methods Used by Jihadist Web Sites - eSecurity Planet
"In the February, 2007 edition of Technical Mujahid is an article that encourages
extremists to download a copy of the software program Secrets of the Mujahideen.
Secrets is an encryption software application which can hide data between the pixels
of an image, and then compress the file in an attempt to defeat steganalysis. The
article provides a detailed example of how 20 messages can be hidden in a 100 x
50 pixel picture. Dr. Chen, director of the Artificial Intelligence lab at the University
of Arizona, has confirmed to me that steganography is being used by some of the
extremist Web sites that they monitor, although an analysis on its use hasn’t been
done yet."
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07/14/2007:
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Terror flows out of hi-tech boom law & order - The Hindu
"Another technique employed by terrorists is steganography that is used to embed
messages in pictures and audio files. Creating further problems for enforcement
agencies, they send these files as spam (messages sent in bulk but not directed
to any particular person). 'The message reaches a wide number of people, among whom
are the intended recipients,' says the police officer. This ensures that surveillance
agencies remain oblivious about the source and destination besides the content of
the message."
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07/11/2007:
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Glasgow probe shows how Web links terror worldwide - IBNLive
"Apart from social messaging services and private chat rooms, high tech methods
which are difficult to detect include steganography, a method of hiding messages
in images, video and audio files which only the intended recipient can decode."
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07/10/2007:
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New-age terrorist is a techie to boot - The Times of India
"Steganography involves writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart
from the intended recipient knows of the existence of the message. In such cases,
the existence of the message is not disguised, but the content is obscured."
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02/21/2007:
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Sharp Rise in Cyber Crimes Foreseen - Business Recorder
"The powerful technologies that have done so much to improve the quality of our
lives are also being used by some of the worst elements of our society; small time
criminals who can take on a whole new persona on the internet; malcontents who can
find like-minded hate groups, scam artists who think they can escape detection in
the anonymity of the web; terrorist who use steganography to communicate by encrypting
messages into image files inaccessible to all except those who have passwords."
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02/15/2007:
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Hiding messages
in plain sight - BBC News
"A technology that can 'hide' information in plain sight on printed images has begun
to see the first commercial applications."
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01/24/2007:
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Embedding the
evil within - Corrections.com
"'A picture is worth a thousand words,' and in today's high-tech world those words
have never been more true, especially for criminals. From terrorists to child pornographers,
photos are providing the means by which they establish covert communication. Many
of these criminals are experts at steganography."
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01/01/2007:
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StegAlyzerAS
and StegalyzerSS - OLETC Today
"Our objective is to provide the computer forensic examiners with a ‘point-click-and-extract’
interface to relieve them of the burden of doing the detailed steganalysis."
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11/01/2006:
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More Than Meets the Eye - Information Security Magazine
"You're confident a trusted employee can't steal research information on your company's
new anti-cancer drug or plans for its next acquisition. Physical and logical controls
monitor just about everything that leaves the building or the network, even encrypted
messages sent to unauthorized recipients. But what about the message hidden in the
family vacation photo he emailed to his "cousin"? Steganography has just bypassed
all your defenses."
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10/16/2006:
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Mumbai police
fail to crack July 11 suspects’ mail - Daily News & Analysis
"Investigators have not been able to crack the contents of at least 35 email accounts
from which, they believe, coded instructions were sent to the perpetrators of the
July 11 blasts by their Lashkar-e-Tayiba bosses in Pakistan. Sources said the instructions,
which included maps, photographs, and technical details (how to use explosives and
camouflage them), were disguised by means of steganography (the art of hiding messages
in graphic files)."
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08/01/2006:
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Steganography
for Dummies: The security technique of hiding secrets in plain sight is becoming
user friendly. Is that a good thing? - CSO Online
"Let's not kid ourselves. Terrorists using steganography shouldn't be considered
a shocking conclusion or written off as sensationalist conspiracy theory. We should,
in fact, assume they're using it. And the more user-friendly the technology becomes,
the more users it will attract, including terrorists, drug syndicates, pornographers,
the mafia and anyone else with something to hide. New steganography software gives
them an easy, highly secure way to hide it."
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11/04/2005:
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London police take advanced approach to fighting crime -
InterGovWorld.com
"Assistant commissioner at the Met Police, Andy Hayman, has claimed the extra time
is needed in order to make sure that all the evidence from a seized PC is located
before someone is released. 'It could be two to three weeks depending upon the sophistication
of the means used to hide it, steganography for example.' A Met spokesperson confirmed
to us that in some terrorism cases, they were facing this exact issue."
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06/10/2002:
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Steganography: Hidden Data - Computerworld
"An engineering firm suspected that an insider was transmitting valuable intellectual
property out of its network. After checking mail logs, investigators found the smoking
gun: two e-mails with harmless-looking image attachments sent by an engineer. Turns
out, the images were hiding two of the company's most precious engineering specifications.
The technique used to hide the specifications inside image files is a high-tech
version of a process called steganography."
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03/07/2002:
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Global raid breaks advanced
internet child porn group - OUT-LAW News
"'Operation Twins' was the result of a 12 month investigation by law enforcement
authorities in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, the US and the UK. The operation focused on a criminal organisation
called the 'Shadowz Brotherhood,' whose activities included the production and distribution
of child pornography and real-time abuse of children. The group used encryption
and also steganography, the practice of hiding of one file within another for extraction
by the intended recipient."
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