From: Sean Roach <roach_s@alph.swosu.edu>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 10:32:38 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
Message-ID: <199611111832.KAA10183@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 04:51 PM 11/7/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote:
...
>In practice I suspect that good stego is hard.  You don't have to be
>right every time when you look for it, just some of the time.  When
>you see packets that seem kind of funny to you, the judge issues you
>a warrant and you search the suspect's house and computer very carefully.
>If stego is in use, the software that generated it can be found.  Then
>you hand out a life sentence.
...

I have heard of trojan horses as being destructive little programs that are
disguised as some other application.  This is most certainly true.  A
scenario for you.  The police gets that court order and they raid my house.
They confiscate my files.  They look over every piece of software.  Alas,
they find nothing, although there do seem to be some nice games.  Unknown to
them, when I run that little doom type game and come to the first switch, I
press Ctrl, Alt 6 and I get a nice little stego routine that allows me to
copy any file into any other file.  They didn't find it because the program
and associated files run for about 6 Kilobytes, All of the prompts are found
in the game, ("Hint: enter your card key at the food processor for extra
health." print characters 7 - 27), and the game isn't obviously designed for
the manipulation of files, with the exception of those that come with the
game.  This would be a DESTRUCTIVE little trojan horse, even though it
didn't destroy one file.