Introduction
Steganography has been used for almost 2500 years that comes in innumerable forms like in personal, intellectual, diplomatic and military usages. Steganography is defined as the concealing or hiding of message by the use of an object that enables the hidden message to be unapparent to the observers (Weiss, n.d).
The first man known to use steganography was Johannes Trithemius and his first writings were known to be published in Latin; the published steganography was made of three parts wherein the first two was made as basis for the first published books about cryptology. The books were instructional manuals for writing messages with hidden meanings. The last part of the three books was more about occult astrology. Back then, two researchers in the name of Dr. Jim Reeds and Dr. Thomas Ernst successfully discovered that the third book of Trithemius contains hidden messages. Surprisingly, one of the messages written in Latin was the translation of the popular sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” (Judge, 2001); in addition there was also a message translated to be ““The bearer of this letter is a rogue and a thief. Guard yourself against him. He wants to do something to you” (Judge, 2001).
Steganography was known to be not the first of its kind in hidden writing. Way back in the year where Mary Queen of the Scots was popular, she used several combinations of both steganography and cryptography to be able to hide letters. She utilized some beer barrel’s bunghole to hide her letters which was then successfully delivered through her prison cell back and forth. Moreover, there were also examples of the usage of steganography in the earlier times which shows people’s higher intelligence over the others while some used it because of the passion and thrill of hiding messages.
The art of steganography was not limited with the aid of writing materials (Kumar, 2010). Some of the Nazca in the country of Peru used humongous geolyphs which are a set of numerous mages that one cannot understand or analyze until viewed from up in the air. Another witty act of steganography was the use of human vectors. An example of it was writing of messages on a silk cloth followed by making it in a shape of a ball and eventually covering it with wax, then, the messenger was tasked to swallow the ball of wax and deliver the message. (Judge, 2001). Another was that Histaiacus who wrote his message for Aristagoras by shaving the head of his messenger. After writing in the shaved head, he let the hair grow back and then sent him to Aristagoras. Steganography was also used in Civil war so as to send hidden messages to help slaves escape.
Present Uses and Techniques for Steganography
As of the present times, the techniques used for steganography was more of the digital form such as still images, audio, text files and movie images. Two of the most commonly and general groups of present steganography are noise manipulation and transform domain. Transform domain encompass those which includes image transformations and algorithm manipulations. A recent event such as the 9/11 bombing last 2001 was deemed to be used with steganography (Kessler, 2001). The al Queda group was linked to have used some rated X sites like porn web sites that have hidden messages on the images shown on the sites. In addition, the aired video of Osama Bin Laden might have hidden messages with its audio as well as the images present in the background (Judge, 2001). Indeed, it is very hard to realize if an image or an audio has hidden meanings with it. However, the aforementioned events were still not proven to have hidden messages with them even after great efforts of the research group from Michigan; they have scanned at least two million images and reports.
Also, there are companies, firms and corporations who now use microdots for identification purposes of their belongings and products. There is also the existence of Electronic Article Surveillance or EAS in the form of tags placed in items in shopping malls so as to protect the store from thieves. Once the tag is scanned, the message in the tag is deleted; if not scanned and pass through the scanning machine, the machine will put on the alarm allowing the store security look out for thieves.
The Future with Steganography
Steganography has both its advantage and disadvantage as well. Thinking more about its advantages, protection can be acquired for intellectual and personal and other types of properties. By the use of watermarks, digital properties now have their signature or an impermeable ownership and are protected from the vast world of internet thieves. On the other note, there are also disadvantages when steganography is used by immoral minds; there are studies and research which claimed that even with sound files and images which seems to be innocent, pornography may be present. Also, even in cartoons which seemed light and fun, a cartoonist may promote sexual desires to its viewers by giving out hints and hidden messages through the characters.
References
Judge, J. (2001). Steganography: Past Present, Future. Retrieved from https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/stenganography/steganography-past-present-future-552
Kessler, G. (2001). Steganography: Hiding Data within Data. Retrieved from http://www.garykessler.net/library/steganography.html
Kumar, A. (2010). Steganography- A Data Hiding Technique. Retrieved from: http://www.ijcaonline.org/volume9/number7/pxc3871887.pdf
Provos,N., Honeyman, P. (N.d.). Hide and Seek: An Introduction to Steganography. Retrieved from: http://niels.xtdnet.nl/papers/practical.pdf
Weiss, M. (N.d.). Principle of Steganography. Retrieved from http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~crypto/Projects/MaxWeiss/steganography.pdf
