Re: [iwar] Article on Steganography in India

From: e.r. (fastflyer28@yahoo.com)
Date: 2001-08-12 06:38:54
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Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2001 06:38:54 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: Re: [iwar] Article on Steganography in India
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Without addressing the political problems that pervade the Indian
sub-continent, if NSA SIGNIT and COMINT messiging has been compromised,
this was not just a bit of porographic silliness, this was hard core
Info war attacks on the Unite States.  I do not think Kahmir was on the
minds of the people who ran this operation, and I wonder if India, or
Pakistans intelligence services were involved?
--- Ravi V Prasad <r_v_p@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Article by me on Steganography in India -- Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
> 
> Hindustan Times, Friday, 10 August 2001, Edit page
> 
> Crack the code 
> 
> by Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
> 
> http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/100801/platefrm.asp
> 
> THE LASHKAR-e-Tayyeba militants responsible for the Red Fort attack 
> were running a cybercafe and using electronic mail to receive 
> instructions from abroad. 
> 
> When the Delhi Police seized their computers and hundreds of 
> encrypted e-mail messages, they found a vast amount of pornographic 
> films and photographs on the hard disks. Thinking that the militants 
> had amassed their pornographic collection for personal enjoyment, the
> 
> police turned it over to the maalkhana as case property. 
> 
> A few weeks later, a police officer in Delhi read in the USA Today 
> about the testimony furnished by George Tenet, Director, CIA, to the 
> US Congress. Tenet said that Islamic extremists were hiding their 
> messages within pornographic and sports images and movies, as well as
> 
> in music files, and were utilising heavily-visited electronic chat 
> rooms and bulletin boards as "drop sites". 
> 
> The intended recipient would download the file and decrypt the hidden
> 
> message. To all others who would download that file, it would seem to
> 
> be an innocuous image. Tenet was alarmed that the extremists had 
> successfully evaded the SIGINT (signals intelligence) and COMINT 
> (communications intelligence) interception operations of America's 
> National Security Agency. 
> 
> Hence, it occurred to this alert policeman in Delhi that the 
> pornography seized from the militants could contain hidden 
> instructions. 
> 
> These developments have drawn attention to the recondite field of 
> steganography, the science of concealing encrypted messages within 
> innocuous cover messages, pictures or music in such a manner that an 
> interceptor or other recipients of the cover file would not even 
> suspect that hidden within it was an encrypted message. 
> 
> In the simpler field of cryptography, an interceptor would be able to
> 
> discern that the encrypted message existed, and his challenge would 
> be merely to crack the code and decrypt the secret message; even this
> 
> simple task would take the best security agencies several weeks to 
> perform. The US Air Force Research Laboratory has forecast the future
> 
> information warfare technologies and the counter measures to fight 
> it. Steganography topped the list. 
> 
> While the fundamentals of steganography were enunciated by Johannes 
> Trithemius of Frankfurt, it is in the last 18 months that 
> technological advances have taken place, mainly at German, Austrian, 
> Swiss, Italian and Finnish universities, Cambridge University in the 
> UK, and Carnegie Mellon and George Mason Universities in the US. 
> Security agencies have been rendered impotent by the inexpensive 
> steganographic software packages which conceal information in digital
> 
> audio, video and image files. 
> 
> The first organisations to recognise the utility of steganographic 
> algorithms developed in European universities were Pakistani hacker 
> groups, the Palestinian cells of Hamas and Hizbollah, Osama bin 
> Laden's Al Qaida, and the LTTE. Al Qaida heeded bin Laden's directive
> 
> that mastering advanced technologies was integral to jehad. It was 
> the first to practise the research results of Professors Ross 
> Anderson and Fabien Petitcolas of Cambridge University, and conceal 
> its messages in dense packet internet traffic, and large bandwidth 
> uncompressed audio, video and image files. 
> 
> These would be located at heavily visited pornographic sites, music 
> download sites, chat rooms and bulletin boards. Al Qaida began to use
> 
> these as message "drop sites" for their agents. A security analyst 
> detected steganographic activity even on heavy-traffic commercial 
> portals such as Amazon and eBay, who were not even aware that their 
> websites were being used for such purposes. 
> 
> A security analyst recounted the case of a suspected Islamic 
> militant. The FBI in the US, which had placed him under surveillance 
> using its packet-sniffing tool Carnivore, was intrigued that while he
> 
> kept e-mailing photographs of his family to e-mail addresses that 
> appeared to be those of relatives, he never received any replies. He 
> was found to be sending instructions to his agents using DEMCOM's 
> Steganos, which was undetectable by FBI's Carnivore. 
> 
> Packages that combine technical excellence with human psychological 
> factors to avoid suspicion are Texto, developed in Finnish 
> universities, which converts messages into blank verse poetry, and 
> Spam Mimic, developed by Peter Wayner, which encodes messages into 
> what looks like a junk e-mail. 
> 
> While round one has gone to the terrorists, Indian security agencies 
> can fight back. Compressed video, music and image files have 
> predictable patterns that would be disrupted when a message is 
> inserted. It is possible to develop a stegoscanner program, akin to a
> 
> virus scanner, to examine hard drives and identify the electronic 
> fingerprints and signatures left behind by steganographic 
> applications. 
> 
> A US steganography expert has formulated a roadmap for future 
> efforts: First, derive the signatures/indicators associated with each
> 
> steganographic package and write a scanner. The harder part is 
> picking up the dead drops. This would require thousands of police 
> officers to continuously monitor the websites, bulletin boards and 
> chat rooms. The next stage is difficult. Once all possible nodes are 
> identified, one should write a Trojan horse that would sit in the 
> machines and scan all activity. 
> 
> India's security agencies should utilise the latest steganographic 
> technologies for their internal communications, in contrast to the 
> insecure channels they use at present. They should also develop the 
> futuristic science of detecting these hidden messages and decrypting 
> them, in order to trace sensitive information being leaked out under 
> innocuous guises. For these, they should work together with the IITs,
> 
> just as the Center for Secure Information Systems in the US is a 
> joint venture between the National Security Agency and the George 
> Mason University. The Pentagon and CIA are funding steganalysis 
> research at the Carnegie Mellon. 
> 
> If Osama bin Laden and the LTTE can put into practice the latest 
> technological breakthroughs from European universities, there is no 
> reason why India should not use its academia and industry. The 
> intelligence agencies should, for instance, examine the hard drives 
> of those Sudanese associates of bin Laden whom they caught some time 
> back. 
> 
> by
> Ravi Visvesvaraya Prasad
> 
> "Crack the code" 
> 
> Hindustan Times, Friday, 10 August 2001, Edit page
> 
> http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/100801/platefrm.asp
> 
> 
> 
> 


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