Maybe no stego on eBay afterall

[Nelson Minar]

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!


                                                     nelson at monkey.org
.       .      .     .    .   .  . . http://www.media.mit.edu/~nelson/

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