From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Fri, 20 Sep 1996 13:52:35 +0800
To: Mullen Patrick <Mullen.Patrick@mail.ndhm.gtegsc.com>
Subject: Re: Stego inside encryption
In-Reply-To: <n1368993974.6219@mail.ndhm.gtegsc.com>
Message-ID: <32421412.2C7C@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Mullen Patrick wrote:
> To take this one step further, has anyone tried to ever use this
> method as an encryption method?  You could hide data in a stream of
> random bits, using position as the encryption method.  Obviously, the 
> data would not be stored in packets; rather as single bits strewn
> throughout the stream.  Even ASCII characters could be hidden in such 
> a system very well, as the possibility of
> choosing the correct 8 bits (extended char set) from the data stream
> when any combination has equal potential of being the correct sequence 
> would be extremely difficult.  Error checking/correcting code could 
> even be used.
> Using this system, the placement algorithm would be the focus of
> attack.  If an algorithm which has a sufficiently random placement was 
> used, extracting the correct bits would be difficult.  Another way to 
> increase the security would be to hide the correct message inside a
> bitstream created by using the same method on other similar messages. 
> (Hiding a real message inside bogus messages. Hmm...Which one's real?)..... some text deleted here....

This sounds like exactly what I've been saying. You could paste the 
message inside or adjacent to the non-text data (and you could bit-pad 
the text before doing so), then move all the bits around, etc.

I'm not sure what was meant by "even ASCII characters could be 
hidden...", since just before you encrypt, everything's ASCII in some 
sense or another.