From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 1998 13:20:00 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Stego-empty hard drives...
In-Reply-To: <199809190501.HAA12423@replay.com>
Message-ID: <v04011743b229a12c2f0b@[139.167.130.247]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 1:01 AM -0400 on 9/19/98, Anonymous wrote:
> (Had this been a UK Customs 'inspection' of the contents of the disk, I
> might have had to explain the half-gig of "noise" I have on the disk.
> Only, it really is noise. Really.)

This makes me think of something that I probably missed in the bowels of
someone's long previous stego posting (um, stego^stego? :-)), how would you
go about either:

Stegoing an encrypted partition as "blank" hard drive space without
actually writing over it unless you wanted to?

or, even,

Stegoing an encrypted partition as not even *there* at all?


Doesn't seem like it would be too hard conceptually (hah!) and, if done,
might actually defeat such Archie-look-up-the-dress as the British
customsfolk are wont to do these days.

Obviously, even if the partition were found, it would look, to sniffer
programs, as if it were empty, right? :-).

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'