How to hide a $100 million Bitcoin transaction in a picture of a kitten

In early 2015, British Prime Minister David戴维•卡梅伦asked US President巴拉克•奥巴马（ to encourage US Internet companies to work closely with British intelligence agencies. In the draft agreement, companies such as Whatsapp and Snapchat are expected to provide data access free channels, otherwise they may face bans in the UK.

Cameron attempted to substantiate his claims in a speech:

"Do we really want communications that require the home secretary to sign an order in person, even in a state of crisis? So far, the government has made it clear that we will not allow that."

In June this year, the US-based organizations ITI (Information Technology Industry Institute) and SIIA (Software and Information Industry Association) wrote a letter asking Obama to work with the technology industry to find ways to "protect security, privacy and innovation."

The Information Technology Industry Association and the Software and Information Industry Association wrote to Barack Obama:

“We oppose any policy or approach that would undermine encryption. Because as we all know, encryption protects every aspect of our daily lives. Encryption is also an essential global digital infrastructure asset that protects and secures transactions, protects the privacy of our communications and the security of our information.”

According to the Forbes article, Apple CEO蒂姆•库克participated in the conversation last month and said:

“I don’t know of any other way to protect people other than encryption.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook said:

"You never know whether the data access privileges will be exploited by someone with bad intentions."

The recent attacks in Paris have reopened the debate over encryption. Prosecutor Loretta Lynch said:

"When individuals choose to move from open communications to encrypted methods, it makes it harder for us to use legal means to intercept those communications and collect the information we need, and it really complicates our mission to protect the American people."

In a statement released just a few days ago, ITI Chairman and CEO Dean Garfield responded to calls to weaken encryption security tools:

“Encryption is a security tool we rely on every day to prevent bad actors from breaching our bank accounts, to protect our cars and planes from malicious attacks, and to keep us safe.”

Dean Garfield, Chairman and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Association, said

"We appreciate the work that law enforcement and the national security community do to protect us, but weakening encryption to provide legitimate institutions with access to data that is also vulnerable to exploitation by bad actors is certain to cause serious physical and financial harm to our society and economy. It makes no sense to increase security by weakening it."

The ongoing debate has sparked a lot of online discussion about alternative methods to keep information private. Well, there is a lesser-known option besides cryptography: “steganography.” It has been around for a while and it’s bound to have a place in the digital realm.

Gary Kessler, a cybersecurity professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, said:

“Steganography is the science of hiding information. While the purpose of cryptography is to make data indecipherable to third parties, the purpose of steganography is to hide data.”

According to the Greek historian Herodotus Demaratus, the Spartan king wrote a message on the back of a wooden board and then covered it with beeswax to write a second message, so steganography can also be traced back to 440 BC.

Over time, the idea was further developed. During and after World War II, spies used lifelike miniature photographs to communicate, often smaller than a period on a typewriter and hidden.

In 1996, Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton, a pilot who communicated by repeatedly blinking his eyes in Morse code to spell out "TORTURE," was captured during the Vietnam War and forced to participate in a choreographed press conference.

A recent example of "steganography" is a series of tweets by Bitcoin security expert Andreas Antonopoulos, describing how he hid a Bitcoin transaction in a picture, including a picture of four kittens in different shapes in a garden, claiming that he hid the information of a transaction of 500,000 Bitcoins in this picture. The transaction took place on November 16, 2011, and was worth $12 million at the time. When Andreas Antonopoulos tweeted about it for the second time in mid-November, the 500,000 Bitcoins were worth $100 million.

The term “steganography” entered the Bitcoin forum as a concept in 2011. Its author, a computer scientist who was said to know cryptography, described a method by which hidden information could be placed in the Bitcoin network, accessible only to those who knew where (and how) to look.

The article summary describes how the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network creates a distributed, anonymous virtual currency and a secure way to store information.

"We propose the concept of a very simple steganography scheme that is related to a difficult graph theory problem (finding the largest clique of an image) and has very good guarantees if implemented correctly."

The cheaply sold article can be downloaded for 1 BTC, currently around $0.31. Gavin Andresen, chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation, bought the document, thinking it was a neat little paper.

A number of projects have been formed in the bitcoin industry, including SonicVortex, which was launched in August 2014. "You take an image, authorize a transaction, and SonicVortex embeds the encrypted transaction into the image."

The platform uses the f5 steganography algorithm, which employs matrix coding to hide information in images. “It is almost impossible to detect any hidden communications.” The inventors of the platform claim that it can even be used by banks and government departments.

SonicVortex says:

“Even in the unlikely event that any communication is doubted, an adversary will be unable to ascertain the content of the message. Thus, your transactions remain hidden and protected even from the most powerful of enemies.”

There are many applications and projects that could use steganography, but Antonopoulos is clear that the technology will take over cryptography, and “steganography” is usually encrypted first (like the kitten picture in this example).

Original article: http://bravenewcoin.com/news/steganography-how-antonopoulos-hid-a-us12m-transaction-in-a-picture-of-kittens/
By B Holmes
Translator: Next (8btc.com username)
Bitcoin address: 1Mwmes1CAwgvy5SEpjPAkbnp94BYtsRw66
Editor: printemps
Source (translation): Babbitt Information