Steganography: Secrets hidden in plain sight. There may be some hidden in these forums.

Steganography is the act of concealing information within another message or piece of medium. It is used within proofing, for integrity and also so that secrets can be passed in plain sight.

One of the more common methods, is hiding a message within the least-significant bits of an uncompressed image file. (Usually a BMP or PNG)

Take this image of an Alien for instance. It is called Alien.png. What a nice PNG.



By itself, there is nothing special about it, it would probably be ignored on most boards and seen as a semi-decent rendering of a non-human species. But let's say I wanted to hide information within this image. Utilising a script that re-writes the least-significant bits within the image, I am able to code a message.

Here is a file called message.txt



The hidden message reads:

Agartha is real, the Hopi Ant people are what we are referring to as Nazca Mummies. Orb UFO's are called milOrbs and piloted by consciousness.

By utilising one of the various github repos with LSB based Steganography scripts already available, you can insert message.txt into Alien.png with very minimal effort. (Or if you know Python, Go, or other languages, you could write your own)



Command for inserting message.txt:

go run .stego.go -e -i .alien.png -mi .message.txt -o secretalien.png

The above command is relatively simple. We call the steganography script using golang. -e flag specifies encryption. -i specifies the image name. -mi specifies and message and -o the output file.

Now we can see a file named secretalien.png has been placed within the same folder as alien.png.



Here is secretalien.png



To the human eye, these two images are indistinguishable from each other. However one holds a message, the other, does not. And for anyone that knows how to look, the message can be retrieved relatively easily.



Utilising LSB style steganography, it is possible to hide messages and entire files, within other files or media. (Predominantly Images and Wavs) There are various detection methods out there, but once you start layering other types of steganography and encryption on top of the already hidden payload, successful detection and decryption can become incredibly difficult.

Now that I have that long winded explanation out of the way, I was wondering if there have been any cases of Steganography found being used on ATS? Considering the nature of this website, I am almost certain that it would have been used somewhere on the forums. And if not, then perhaps it has been used, but not located yet?

You can read more about Steganography here.

Not steganography exactly but behind the gray eyes are to be found other insects too, such as bees.

The Gray is a very generic container.

a reply to: NobodySpecial268

Hey NNS! Hope you have been well mate Agree on the Grays being containers. It is interesting to note that anecdotally, we have been called soul containers as well. I don't pretend to know the truth of it all, but I love discussing the possibilities regardless.

Your story about meeting Melissa stuck with me. I have seen plenty of bees since then, and each time I notice one, I stop to say hello. I'd like to thank you for that.

a reply to: K1xaru

You're welcome K1xaru. I look after my garden bees much more kindly too.

The text inside the gray image in your OP was surprising. Lately I have been noticing references to the "ant people".

Your reference of humans as "soul containers" is I suppose a form of spiritual steganography.

(smile) One would never guess the wife beating drunk asleep in the gutter having something divine in him. Well hidden in many people.

I understand (right or wrong) that here on ATS, uploading images ending in jpeg is not allowed. jpg on the other hand works.

I think 4chan has a similar policy to stop porn images being hidden inside harmless looking ones..

It is possible there are some hidden messages around these boards. There are a few here that do like their codes, then there is some of the other associations around this site.

Australia brought in a regulation a few years ago that criminalized any encryption the the government did not approve, have a back door too. They have been listening since the first phones got installed. Unless it is a national security issue, meh. So far.

Setting up these kinds of networks is sketchy stuff. I know it can make the difference between life and death at times getting a heads up. But on a site like this, who do you trust? With a lot of posting history this is a strong character reference, but even still if push comes to shove on what issue?

To put ATS on the suspect list also puts many other media/social websites on the list as well. it is not just a close nit group of human entities that could use such methods to communicate, some of the boundaries this AI tech is pushing might also utilize such methods. It does know the worst of us.

Wow, I knew about this, but I never knew the history behind it.

a reply to: K1xaru

so in other words it's just newfangled subliminal messaging for the digital age.

which science has shown only really works best if your if you already leaning or desiring something and last just a short time.

or are you talking about sending secret messages to cohorts to do something which they know a message is being sent?

S&F and sub, because this post should be remembered for when censorship totally takes over.

We could all use this method when the time comes.

We could pretend ATS has become an "alien themed art site".
Meanwhile...

a reply to: K1xaru

In a way it is security through obscurity because few people would bother to run a picture through a decode algorithm just to see if there is something there.

If you have a decryption algorithm, all you have to do is apply it. So, to really securely send secret messages, you would have to encrypt the data first, before embedding it.

But having some sort of output from a steganographic decryption would probably be suspicious. My guess is that the three letter agencies do this by default to all picture and sound files. And perhaps some big online companies do so as well?

I wonder with some types of compression and with small, say 'icon' file sizes, if the degradation would become noticeable?

Also, the same algorithm could be applied to (pre-compressed) video, too.

Ultimately, everything online is 'numbers'.

very interesting....

For messages sent on ATS, the preferred method is to write an enormous wall of text and hide the message in every 5th &6th letter. Or leave a link to a wall of text where the message is hidden, one more level of armature security.

originally posted by: lilzazz
very interesting....

For messages sent on ATS, the preferred method is to write an enormous wall of text and hide the message in every 5th &6th letter. Or leave a link to a wall of text where the message is hidden, one more level of armature security.

One can achieve armature security by the addition of a dingle arm, which prevents side-fumbling and sinusoidal depleneration.



A History of Encabulation — Advancements From the Turbo Encabulator and the Retro Encabulator Have Led to the Hyper Encabulator

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: lilzazz
very interesting....

For messages sent on ATS, the preferred method is to write an enormous wall of text and hide the message in every 5th &6th letter. Or leave a link to a wall of text where the message is hidden, one more level of armature security.

One can achieve armature security by the addition of a dingle arm, which prevents side-fumbling and sinusoidal depleneration.

A History of Encabulation — Advancements From the Turbo Encabulator and the Retro Encabulator Have Led to the Hyper Encabulator

A dingle arm prevents side fumbling? Show your work, smart guy!!

a reply to: chr0naut

A History of Encabulation — Advancements From the Turbo Encabulator and the Retro Encabulator Have Led to the Hyper Encabulator

Very colorful language until the billing hours.

a reply to: lilzazz

I find it's best to use a griddle-fast on the Jimble with a carbonification medium to promote aerodynamic confluence,
and that way you can often sidestep the side fumbling issue altogether,
unless of course the maxillo-spacial variance is too great. In that case you need a vectoring array with a more focused Schweiss prism.

Dingle arms are tried and true though, and do work. I won't knock them.

Accidental dual post. Sorry!

originally posted by: lilzazz

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: lilzazz
very interesting....

For messages sent on ATS, the preferred method is to write an enormous wall of text and hide the message in every 5th &6th letter. Or leave a link to a wall of text where the message is hidden, one more level of armature security.

One can achieve armature security by the addition of a dingle arm, which prevents side-fumbling and sinusoidal depleneration.

A History of Encabulation — Advancements From the Turbo Encabulator and the Retro Encabulator Have Led to the Hyper Encabulator

A dingle arm prevents side fumbling? Show your work, smart guy!!

Perhaps best illustrated with a short video:

originally posted by: kwaka
a reply to: chr0naut

A History of Encabulation — Advancements From the Turbo Encabulator and the Retro Encabulator Have Led to the Hyper Encabulator

Very colorful language until the billing hours.

There have been further developments in encabulation but I cannot describe them due to legal embargo and government secrecy classification.

a reply to: chr0naut

For what it's worth I just wanna say your video made me Pro Dingle-Arm.

a reply to: BernnieJGato

I am not sure this would fall into the category of subliminal messaging or subliminal stimuli, although I suppose in theory it could? If it could be proven that the human brain on some subconscious level understood there was a message hidden without ever being told there was one, then I would agree that this tactic could be used for such messaging.

Moreso, these types of messages are sent between parties that are expecting the messages and know what to look for. The messages may even be encrypted themselves, so that upon finding the 'hidden message' within the image or sound file, you get the following:

eyJpdiI6InZRdDIzaDUrcFVxT01OYmZrdDl4YkE9PSIsCiJ2IjoxLAoiaXRlciI6MTAwMCwKImtzIjoyNTYsCiJ0cyI6NjQsCiJtb2RlIjoiY2NtIiwKImFkYXRhIjoiIiwKImNpcGhlciI6ImFlcy IsCiJzYWx0IjoiOUJ2Q01oY0Rhb2c9IiwKImN0Ijoic1lzQlFNRHlkNzV6RC96VzdOWTVOaTBZcThhRjk5d0puRjM4NUg2UEJrSGFjc1VsZnBEY3VqWmc1ZXhHWHA5ays3blJTVlFVLytQencyRXRp SzEzMlRQcmgzWklNd3kraU1XWmZyM3hJRjhSSVBZaGg5V2trUT09In0

Only by knowing the password for the above, and utilising another decryption tool, would you be able to get the actual message that was intended.



The steps would be:
1: Agree on an encryption type/password for your messages
2: Come up with the message, then Encrypt it using the above
3: Hide the encrypted message in the Least Significant Bits of an image or sound file
4: Post the picture online
5: Receiver downloads the image, and searched for the encrypted message in the LSB
6: Using the pre-agreed decryption method, the receiver decrypts the message and is able to read it.