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A group of researchers has achieved a breakthrough in secure communications by developing an algorithm that conceals sensitive information so effectively that it is impossible to detect that anything has been hidden.The team, led by the University of Oxford in close collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, envisages that this method may soon be used widely in digital human communications, including social media and private messaging. In particular, the ability to send perfectly secure information may empower vulnerable groups, such as dissidents, investigative journalists, and humanitarian aid workers.The algorithm applies to a setting called steganography: the practice of hiding sensitive information...

During the first Cold War, American and British spies would sometimes place coded messages in newspaper classified ads to communicate with each other. And according to new reports in the New York Times and The Intercept, the National Security Agency (NSA) has updated the tactic, using its public Twitter account to send secret messages to at least one Russian spy.... According to the reports, the unnamed Russian met with US spies in person in Germany, and the NSA sometimes communicated with the Russian spy by sending roughly a dozen coded messages from the NSA’s Twitter account. The one important question.......

SNIPPET: "I. When considering the matter of jihadis online, remember that most of what we think we know is based on analyses of the comments made by an handful of vocal activists. The vast majority of jihadis online, be they on forums or social networking sites[i], say nothing. Skillful translations and insightful analyses by definition tell us little about this potentially lethal yet silent majority."

A suspected member of the Al Qaeda terrorist group, arrested in May last year in Germany, was found with a memory stick hidden in his underwear. Police discovered the stick contained a password-protected folder with pornographic videos inside it, but suspicious computer forensic experts thought there must be more. After weeks of analysis, they determined that one of the pornographic videos contained concealed documents detailing Al Qaeda operations and plans. The files were hidden in the video file through a process called steganography or concealed writing. The term steganography includes methods used for centuries, such as invisible ink, but now...

Using executable program files to hide data with steganographySteganography is a form of security through obscurity in which information is hidden within an unusual medium. An artist might paint a coded message into a portrait, for instance, or an author embed words in the text. A traditional paper watermark is a well-known example of steganography in action. At first glance, there would appear to be nothing unusual about the work, but a recipient aware of the presence of the hidden message would be able to extract it easily. In the computer age, steganography has become more of a science than...

U.S. officials charged 11 people with being deep-cover Russian spies after a multi-year investigation that turned up allegations of a vast undercover network designed to collect information for Moscow, including new U.S. nuclear weapons research. Four of the alleged spy ring's members were posing as Canadians, one of whom had apparently co-opted the identity of the son of a Burlington man who died in 2005. Court papers filed by the FBI say Donald Howard Heathfield, Tracey Lee Ann Foley, Patricia Mills and Christopher R. Metsos all claimed to be Canadian. Metsos remains at large. Investigators allege Heathfield assumed the identity...

<p>WASHINGTON — Ten Russian intelligence officers have been arrested for allegedly serving as illegal agents of the Russian government in the United States, the Justice Department announced Monday.</p>

Besides their well-known penchant for anti-Semitism, misogyny and nihilistic violence, Muslim extremists are also gaining a disturbing reputation among British security agencies as collectors of child pornography. According to a report on The Times website last week, police in Great Britain are discovering that their investigations into Muslim terrorism are leading them into the depraved world of child sexual exploitation. The reverse is also occurring with child protection officers encountering people who are “preparing to carry out terrorist acts.”

For some, the internet is merely a hiding place — a web of secret corridors where all manner of shameful deeds unfold. But the police never expected that it might become a strategic platform where two groups of society's outcasts, terrorists and child sex abusers, could meet to exchange operational secrets. The realisation that there might be something in common between violent Muslim fanatics known for their supposed piety and sexual deviants who prey on children has only slowly dawned on officers. Cracking the mystery of how these worlds overlap is expected to improve understanding of the mindsets of both...

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

The Americans had tried almost everything, but they just couldn't crack an encrypted message they came across while investigating the 9/11 attacks. Finally, they approached a 17-year-old boy in Delhi about whom The New York Times had done a feature. Over the next 10 days, Ankit Fardia hunkered down in his room in Delhi and came up with the key to crack the message. The worst fears of American investigators came true — Al-Qaeda was using a sophisticated technology, called steganography, to communicate. It involved sending encrypted messages concealed in a photograph or series of photographs. “I was lucky in...

ROME, May 8 — Investigators analyzing computers seized from an Italian mosque say they have uncovered images of the twin towers that were downloaded just days before the 9/11 attacks, as well as a trove of pornographic photos they believe were used to conceal coded messages. On Sept. 4, 2001, according to investigators, pictures of the World Trade Center were saved as temporary files on one of the computers at the Via Quaranta mosque in Milan — the mosque frequented by Abdelkader Mahmoud Es Sayed, also known as Abu Saleh, an Egyptian currently on trial in absentia in Milan on...

'Super-DMCA' fears suppress security research By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Posted: 14/04/2003 at 10:16 GMT Steganography and honeypot expert Niels Provos may risk four years in prison by completing his Ph.D., writes Kevin Poulsen, of SecurityFocus. A University of Michigan graduate student noted for his research into steganography and honeypots -- techniques for concealing messages and detecting hackers, respectively -- says he's been forced to move his research papers and software offshore and prohibit U.S. residents from accessing it, in response to a controversial new state law that makes it a felony to possess software capable of concealing the existence or...

There exists a series of 'nonsense' postings in Usenet. (Please no jokes about Usenet already being full of nonsense). Obviously computer generated.  These often have Arabic names interspersed in the content. One speculation is they might just be 'merry pranksters' posting vast amounts of nonsense to confuse Usenet readers. Another speculation is this might be the 'increased al-Qaeda chatter' we hear about when the Home Land Security changes the color to a redder hue. Note the increase just after Dec. 22 (the date that the Shoe Bomber was captured trying to blow up Miami to Paris, flight AA 63). We...