XXX
Seven months before September 11, a widely quoted newspaper report
had claimed that bin Laden's followers were operating a
communications network based on encrypted messages concealed inside
pornographic pictures. This technique, steganography, hides a coded
message inside a picture or music file by making numerous small changes
to data. The changes are invisible to ordinary viewers or listeners but
can be read by special software.
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The allegation that plans had been hidden inside internet porn has,
so far, proven unsupported. A few days before the attack, a team from
the University of Michigan reported they had searched for images that
might contain terror plans, using a network of computers to look for the
"signature" of steganography. According to researchers at the
Centre for Information Technology Integration, they "analysed two
million images ... but have not been able to find a single hidden
message."
LH Gary Embury, RH top Mark Bolland, RH bottom Al Gebra
COPYRIGHT 2006 Visual Studies
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