My guess is that this is either a false positive by outguess or something embedded by NY Post meant for internal use.
Edit: outguess is finding binary data in the file, but the binary data is 57643 bytes, far larger than a PGP key. outguess 0.13 supposedly finds a smaller payload... Yeah my guess is just false positive.
This is a ELI10 version that I took from another post as a lot of this cryptography is above my level of understanding.
Posting this here because what I found elsewhere is probably incorrect and more conspiracy orientated, however it would be nice to hear what experts in the field would think this is used for.
>Someone distrusted who they were trying to contact at the NY post as being a read editor in charge. They had the NY Post alter a published Epstein photo sent on a web site for the world to see, that had a hidden message in it. The message was not meant to be found easily and was for one person, a public whistle-blower or snitch, to see. The message is a PUBLIC encryption key meant to sent uncrackable images and file in future to the NY Post news desk. The person meant to see it now has a PGP public email key, and can send NY post their own even better PGP public email key now, and two may communication can start. The size of the PGP key found is overkill in size, a size only used by the CIA, or science researches. It's size makes it seem astronomical in size paranoia security.
My question: who was looking, and why? Is someone really checking every image on NY Post/other media sites for steganographically embedded data, or were they acting on a tip off? This whole thing looks extremely odd.
People were suspicious because the published NYPost photo appeared to be photoshopped or altered in some way. Not sure if it actually was but it caught on.
This is very much an extraordinary claim and IMO is entirely without merit.
For those who do not know anything about steganography, it is the science of hiding messages in the 'noise' of a carrier file. The carrier file is most commonly an image or a video. Since image and video files are so large, and the eye cannot detect minor differences in low level bits (think the difference between the hex color #ff6600 used in the HN title bar... if you changed it to #ff6601 one day, you would not be able to visually perceive that the color changed, yet you've now 'hidden' a 1 bit in your image)
NOW back to this... in the late 90's and early 2000's the steganography thing was HUGE. As in, tons of research and home-grown tools were developed during this time. "Outguess" was one of those tools, and it looks like the one referenced from the Twitter screenshot.
Remember, at its most basic level, steganography is nothing more than 'flipping' the least order bits of 'something' - whether it's color indices in a GIF file, or in this case, a JPEG file. There's no "marker" that says HEY, STEGANOGRAPHY HERE. After all, that would defeat the purpose, no?
Therefore, this is PERFECT fodder for conspiracy theorists to hook in ignorant (not using in a derogatory fashion, just folks who don't know) laypersons into thinking there is something "hidden" by waving their hands with jargon and pseudoscience. Try it for yourself- run 'outguess' in extraction mode against ANY jpeg file and you'll get random data back. Voila! Hidden messages everywhere! Better yet ENCRYPTED HIDDEN MESSAGES! OH NOES!
TL;DR: a team of undeclared Russian spies (so-called 'illegals') lived inside the US for years, sending data back to Moscow. One of the ways they communicated with the "Center" was through - you guessed it - steganography. You can read all about how it worked in the criminal complaint here: https://vault.fbi.gov/ghost-stories-russian-foreign-intellig... - start at page 143.
[+] [-] aazaa|6 years ago|reply
Pass.
At a minimum, an independent link to image and the URL for the image on the Post's website should be easily found. Neither are.
[+] [-] aphextim|6 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/_Luke_Slytalker/status/11693807432916049...
[+] [-] deathanatos|6 years ago|reply
* Commenters have to beg to get link to screenshot. OP tweets that he doesn't have Internet.
* No upload of supposed output.
* No reproduction instructions
* program doesn't actually emit the output in the screenshot if run over supposed input
* Banner present in screenshot that doesn't appear in this program's output (edit: ah, someone found a wrapper that does.[1])
* Confusion between output size in bytes of an encoded GPG key with all its metadata, and a cryptographic key's length in bits
* Outdated version of an ancient bespoke program that can barely build itself
Don't get your news or politics from Twitter.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20886905
[+] [-] xzmmd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leetbulb|6 years ago|reply
Edit: outguess is finding binary data in the file, but the binary data is 57643 bytes, far larger than a PGP key. outguess 0.13 supposedly finds a smaller payload... Yeah my guess is just false positive.
[+] [-] haste410|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aphextim|6 years ago|reply
Posting this here because what I found elsewhere is probably incorrect and more conspiracy orientated, however it would be nice to hear what experts in the field would think this is used for.
>Someone distrusted who they were trying to contact at the NY post as being a read editor in charge. They had the NY Post alter a published Epstein photo sent on a web site for the world to see, that had a hidden message in it. The message was not meant to be found easily and was for one person, a public whistle-blower or snitch, to see. The message is a PUBLIC encryption key meant to sent uncrackable images and file in future to the NY Post news desk. The person meant to see it now has a PGP public email key, and can send NY post their own even better PGP public email key now, and two may communication can start. The size of the PGP key found is overkill in size, a size only used by the CIA, or science researches. It's size makes it seem astronomical in size paranoia security.
[+] [-] busterarm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aphextim|6 years ago|reply
Nvm, upon review this post is now Flagged.
[+] [-] fredley|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] creaghpatr|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipython|6 years ago|reply
For those who do not know anything about steganography, it is the science of hiding messages in the 'noise' of a carrier file. The carrier file is most commonly an image or a video. Since image and video files are so large, and the eye cannot detect minor differences in low level bits (think the difference between the hex color #ff6600 used in the HN title bar... if you changed it to #ff6601 one day, you would not be able to visually perceive that the color changed, yet you've now 'hidden' a 1 bit in your image)
NOW back to this... in the late 90's and early 2000's the steganography thing was HUGE. As in, tons of research and home-grown tools were developed during this time. "Outguess" was one of those tools, and it looks like the one referenced from the Twitter screenshot.
Remember, at its most basic level, steganography is nothing more than 'flipping' the least order bits of 'something' - whether it's color indices in a GIF file, or in this case, a JPEG file. There's no "marker" that says HEY, STEGANOGRAPHY HERE. After all, that would defeat the purpose, no?
Therefore, this is PERFECT fodder for conspiracy theorists to hook in ignorant (not using in a derogatory fashion, just folks who don't know) laypersons into thinking there is something "hidden" by waving their hands with jargon and pseudoscience. Try it for yourself- run 'outguess' in extraction mode against ANY jpeg file and you'll get random data back. Voila! Hidden messages everywhere! Better yet ENCRYPTED HIDDEN MESSAGES! OH NOES!
Now this is not all to say that steganography has never been used for high level statecraft. Read all about FBI Operation Ghost Stories - https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/operation-ghost-stories-ins....
TL;DR: a team of undeclared Russian spies (so-called 'illegals') lived inside the US for years, sending data back to Moscow. One of the ways they communicated with the "Center" was through - you guessed it - steganography. You can read all about how it worked in the criminal complaint here: https://vault.fbi.gov/ghost-stories-russian-foreign-intellig... - start at page 143.
[+] [-] DanBC|6 years ago|reply
There's been some work of the best ratio but I can't find it at the moment.