steganography
Latest
Internet pictures can hide code that leaves you open to hacks (update: criticism)
You might want to be more cautious the next time you click on an internet image link sent by a stranger -- much like the pirate cat photo you see above, that adorable picture could be hiding something sinister. Security researcher Saumil Shah has developed a security exploit that uses steganography to slip malicious JavaScript code into an image file. If you happen to view the picture in a vulnerable web browser, it opens the door to installing malware or directly hijacking your computer. And this sort of attack is definitely usable in the real world, as Motherboard found out first-hand.
How to hide secret messages in your Twitter updates
Twitter offers a surprising freedom of expression within 140 characters, but what if you want to hide a message in plain sight -- say, to get around censorship? Well, it's now as easy as pie. Matthew Holloway has built a web tool that uses steganography (that is, hiding messages within other content) to put secret phrases inside your tweets. The technique replaces letters with similar-looking characters that hide a second message you can only reveal with the right decoder.
Fujitsu flaunts color e-ink, future tech concept horn o' plenty
We're feelin' what Fujitsu's done so far this year, but now we've got an idea of what it might bust out with in the near future. Last week's Fujitsu North American Technology Forum 2007 was an opportunity to flaunt not-yet-real (at least not in the US) concepts like color e-paper and FPcodes, among a few others. We've seen Fujitsu's elusive e-paper prototype before, and it's still not ready, but at least now we know that the 8-inch, 640 x 480 color display is about 0.03-inches thick, with a 12-inch version in the works and an ambitious goal to reach 2.5-meters. It requires virtually no power and can operate with a teeny boost of focused energy like radio waves from a cellphone. In addition to this e-paper flight of fancy, Fujitsu was showing off a waterproof RFID tag, along with those QR-killin' FPcodes and their vein pattern identification system we've seen before.
