Thursday, May 3, 2007

Word of the day: Steganography

Wow, for once I actually scooped Boing Boing with my Brainiac post yesterday about the massive game of online hide-and-seek that DVD hackers and others are playing with the AACS LA. Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow reported on this phenomenon in the wee hours of the morning, today, using the same Flickr photo I did as an illustration. Doctorow and I must be stealing ideas from the same places.

And now, the word of the day: steganography, a way to conceal a coded message inside an innocuous-looking photograph, document, or other bit of media. The photo I posted yesterday is one example of steganography; Doctorow's post documents two more ways in which the infamous processing key is currently being concealed from search engines: as a song, and as a photo of (gulp) a scalp tattoo.

Speaking of which, steganography is Greek for "covered writing." When the ancient Greeks wanted to transmit a secret message, we were informed at Boston Latin School, they'd shave the head of a messenger, tattoo the information on his scalp, wait till his hair grew back, then send him off on his journey. Glad to see that this fun practice is still flourishing!

UPDATE: Looks like the tattoo image (no longer posted to this site, per order of the higher-ups) wasn't a scalp tattoo. It was a chest tattoo. I have seen the full photo now; turns out the tattooing was done here in Boston.

UPDATE: What do Brainiac readers think of this blog post? Find out here.

Posted by Joshua Glenn at 08:22 AM

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