the Cryptographer fights back...

I would like to apologise for the gap between my first posting and the second. But anyway it's always better late than never...

Continuing on my cryptic journey....today I will touch upon the subject of Steganography...
"Steganography is the art and science of communicating in a way which hides the existence of the communication. In contrast to Cryptography, where the enemy is allowed to detect, intercept and modify
messages without being able to violate certain security
premises guaranteed by a cryptosystem, the goal of Steganography is to hide messages inside other harmless messages in a way that does not allow any enemy to even detect that there is a second message present".

Steganography can be used in a large amount of data formats in the digital world of today. The most popular data formats used are .bmp, .doc, .gif, .jpeg, .mp3, .txt and .wav. Mainly because of their popularity on the Internet and the ease of use of the steganographic tools that use these data formats. These formats are also popular because of the relative ease by which redundant or noisy data can be removed from them and replaced with a hidden message.

A Brief History of Steganography

The earliest recordings of Steganography were by the Greek historian Herodotus in his chronicles known as "Histories" and date back to around 440 BC. Herodotus recorded two stories of Steganographic techniques during this time in Greece. The first stated that King Darius of Susa shaved the head of one of his
prisoners and wrote a secret message on his scalp. When the prisoner’s hair grew back, he was sent to the Kings son in law Aristogoras in Miletus undetected. The second story also came from Herodotus, which claims that a soldier named Demeratus
needed to send a message to Sparta that Xerxes intended to invade Greece. Back

then, the writing medium was text written on wax-covered tablets. Demeratus removed the wax from the tablet, wrote the secret message on the underlying wood, recovered the tablet with wax to make it appear as a blank tablet and finally sent the
document without being detected.
Romans used invisible inks, which were based on natural substances such as fruit juices and milk. This was accomplished by heating the hidden text, thus revealing its contents. Invisible inks have become much more advanced and are still in limited use today.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, many writers including Johannes Trithemius (author of Steganographia) and Gaspari Schotti (author or Steganographica) wrote on Steganagraphic techniques such as coding techniques for text, invisible inks,
and incorporating hidden messages in music.
Between 1883 and 1907, further development can be attributed to the publications of Auguste Kerckhoff (author of Cryptographic Militaire) and Charles Briquet (author of Les Filigranes). These
books were mostly about Cryptography, but both can be attributed to the foundation of some steganographic systems and more significantly to watermarking techniques.

During the times of WWI and WWII, significant advances in Steganography took place. Concepts such as null ciphers , image substitution and microdot (taking data such as pictures and reducing it to the size of a large period on a piece of paper) were introduced and embraced as great steganographic techniques.
In the digital world of today, namely 1992 to present, Steganography is being used all over the
world on computer systems. Many tools and technologies have been created that take
advantage of old steganographic techniques such as null ciphers, coding in images, audio, video and microdot. With the research this topic is now getting we will see a lot of great applications
for Steganography in the near future.

And the most interesting part...the one which I enjoy compiling most...The Quiz...It might seem a little bit of bland But don't worry the quiz is not at all on Steganography... although pictures are the heart and soul of the questions...I thought this as the only way to thwart Google's power...

The Significance of the photograph.....




If you can answer the above then you should also know this...




The Personality...






The Eccentric Genius...





Identify this pioneering effort whose next generations has changed our perspective.....





The difference....




This small logo is in my opinion the best question of this series.....Identify the company...





If I tell you the name and you give a search in Google then you will be astounded
to know the variety that is associated with her name....





Their Indian Counterpart....





The visual that you are watching is not at all a clip from a movie (although you might have seen this if you would have watched an English TV serial "I dream of Jeanie" about a Jeannie and an US Army Officer that was telecast almost a decade ago) but of something which had a gigantic impact...Enough hints..Identify..




You will be amazed to know the significance of this photograph that heralded the beginning of an era that is still going on....




The only hint that I can provide for the above questions is that don't go outside the field of Computers...Well to end it I would like to wish all of you a very happy and prosperous New Year...