Back on October 30, 2001, the New York Times ran an article about steganography and terrorism by Gina Kolata: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/30/science/physical/30STEG.html?pagewanted=print
The article quotes a Chet Hosmer, president/CEO of WetStone Technologies: "We started getting hits," Mr. Hosmer said, adding that about 0.6 percent of millions of pictures on auction and pornography sites had hidden messages. We had some discussion on how silly this claim was on the cryptography mailing list. Well, today Salon follows up on the story, and quotes Chet again: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/07/17/steganography/ Chet Hosmer ... said that in his research, very few messages on eBay show signs of being infected by terrorists. About one in 100,000 pictures "appears suspicious," but a much smaller number -- "one in every 15 to 20 million files" -- is "something that we really believe is a real hidden message." I wonder which it is? 0.6%? Or one in every 20 million files? Either way, they're not giving out any examples. I bet they're still spending the Air Force's money to do the study, though. I guess examples of sloppy crypto research shouldn't be so surprising anymore. But the hype surrounding this particular story, with terrorists lurking under every eBay auction, was particularly troubling to me. It's unusual that a story like this would have such a well researched followup. Thanks to Salon! [EMAIL PROTECTED] . . . . . . . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]