Re: [abcusers] Steganography
Jack Campin escreveu: I seem to remember something closer to what you want in a story about a woman singing a lullaby to her child in such a way as to warn her lover that her husband was around; she emphasized certain words in the lullaby so as to spell out a message meaning go away. Tello Tito's Traditional Asturian Music site url: http://www.geocities.com/titoasturies/ has lots of such in 'Quinientes y picu temes tradicionales asturianus' url: http://www.geocities.com/titoasturies/MusAst.txt, e.g. song X:41: El que está a la puerta que nun entre agora, que está el padre en casa del neñu que llora. Ea, mio neñín, agora non, ea, mio neñín, que está el papón. Válgante mil diablos, que mal entendéis: que volváis mañana, que tiempu tenéis. Ea, mio neñín ... In English: He who is at the door / Is not to come in now,/ For the crying baby's father / Is home.// Hey, my baby,/Please not now/ Hey, my baby,/For the bogeyman is by.// Go away, you thousand devils/Who can't hear quite well:/ Come back tomorrow,/You have lots of time. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[abcusers] Steganography
As a carrier medium for concealed messages abc is pretty poor. The tunes are too small, and contain too little redundant information. This means that you have to add some (apparently) redundant characters to contain the message, and it's a dead giveaway. Steganography is usually done by substituting the low-order bits for each pixel of a picture, or each sample in a sound file. The message is itself encrypted, and if you use a modern encryption algorithm, the resulting cyphertext is indistinguishable from a string of random numbers. The only effect on the carrier picture or sound is to make it a little more noisy. Unless the enemy has a copy of the original picture/sound to compare, there is no way he can prove that the intercepted message contains anything unusual. abc is simply too good at doing what it was designed for to be used for anything else. Phil Taylor (Who has been writing a shareware encryption program, but doesn't feel like releasing it right now.) To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [abcusers] Steganography
I wonder if there any known cases of musicians encoding messages in the fine details of how they play? This is done with song lyrics all the time, of course, mostly by using metaphor. But I don't think I've read of it being done with the music itself. There are some stories of this in the piobaireachd tradition: one is of a piper who was being held hostage on the ship of a force that was about to attack his home village. Being asked to play something innocuous as they neared land, he instead launched into the clan's alarm call. The attackers killed him on the spot but the warning was enough to beat off the raid. (I don't think any of these stories are verifiable, but there are quite a few of them). But coding a bunch of set prearranged signals is easy. I seem to remember something closer to what you want in a story about a woman singing a lullaby to her child in such a way as to warn her lover that her husband was around; she emphasized certain words in the lullaby so as to spell out a message meaning go away. This tune has a cleverly encoded piece of symbolism, albeit of rather limited application: X:1 T:Old Nick's Lumber Room, or the Pawnbroker's Warehouse S:Edinburgh Public Library Musical Scraps v2 p116 Z:Jack Campin 1998 N:press cutting in 19th century style N:anybody know where it comes from? M:6/8 L:1/8 K:A A3 (cAc)|eae cAc|E3 (GEG)|B^dB GEG|A3 cAc|eae cAc|faf ^dBd|e3- [e3E3] :| E3 GEG |B^dB GEG|A3 cAc |eae cAc|faf ^dBd|eae cAc|B^dB GEG|A3 [A3A,3]:| === http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ === To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
