OT: hidden messages, steganography and Osama'S code

[Mike Shaw <mshaw@wwisp.com>]

>While the misc mailing list isn't the best place for such a joke there is 
>nothing racist about it. It could only be a racist statment if the 
>statment had something about an ethinic group, sex, or religious prefrence 
>which it clearly does not. Also note that you do not own the misc mailing 
>list and it is up to th good folks at OpenBSD to filter the mail or not 
>(and what to filter if they do).

I don't think it was even a joke, much less a racist one.  There have been 
many reports in the (so-called) mainstream press of hidden messages 
floating around.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-05-binladen.htm
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,41861,00.html
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/stego/abc.html

With this kind of press, it's no wonder that anonymous "scrambled" text 
sent to a distribution list would make someone jittery.

However if you read the nitty-gritty from the folks who have done some good 
work looking for these messages (who are probably on this mailing list as I 
think they are OpenBSD developers--yay back on topic again!), you see that 
the prospect of islamic terrorists* transmitting huge lists of marching 
orders and secret bomb plans via pictures of vintage weeble collections on 
ebay is still pretty much an urban-legend stage (although who knows what 
they are doing).

http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/stego/usenet.php
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/papers/detecting.pdf

-Mike

*(to keep things warm and fuzzy, I hereby acknowledge that there are 
terrorists of the islamic, protestant, amish, hindu, buddhist, 
white-supremacist, black-power, catholic, environmental, anti-abortion, 
pro-choice, anti-capitalism, anti-socialism, anarchist, pro-linux, pokemon, 
and country line dancing persuasions.  The articles had to do with Islamic 
ones)