An easy way to hide secret messages

[thewayne]

Consider the following email:

Dear Business person ; This letter was specially selected to be sent to you . If you no longer wish to receive our publications simply reply with a Subject: of "REMOVE" and you will immediately be removed from our club ! This mail is being sent in compliance with Senate bill 1916 ; Title 9 , Section 303 ! This is not multi-level marketing . Why work for somebody else when you can become rich inside 55 days ! Have you ever noticed people will do almost anything to avoid mailing their bills & the baby boomers are more demanding than their parents . Well, now is your chance to capitalize on this . WE will help YOU sell more & use credit cards on your website . You can begin at absolutely no cost to you ! But don't believe us . Ms Jones of New Mexico tried us and says "I've been poor and I've been rich - rich is better" ! We are licensed to operate in all states ! So make yourself rich now by ordering immediately . Sign up a friend and your friend will be rich too ! Thanks ! Dear Salaryman ; Your email address has been submitted to us indicating your interest in our newsletter ! If you are not interested in our publications and wish to be removed from our lists, simply do NOT respond and ignore this mail ! This mail is being sent in compliance with Senate bill 1916 ; Title 6 ; Section 302 ! THIS IS NOT MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING ! Why work for somebody else when you can become rich as few as 43 MONTHS . Have you ever noticed how long the line-ups are at bank machines & people will do almost anything to avoid mailing their bills ! Well, now is your chance to capitalize on this . WE will help YOU process your orders within seconds plus deliver goods right to the customer's doorstep . You can begin at absolutely no cost to you . But don't believe us . Ms Jones who resides in Rhode Island tried us and says "Now I'm rich many more things are possible" ! This offer is 100% legal . For the sake of your family order now . Sign up a friend and your friend will be rich too . Best regards ! Dear Internet user ; Your email address has been submitted to us indicating your interest in our letter ! If you are not interested in our publications and wish to be removed from our lists, simply do NOT respond and ignore this mail ! This mail is being sent in compliance with Senate bill 1619 , Title 9 ; Section 308 ! This is different than anything else you've seen ! Why work for somebody else when you can become rich inside 85 days . Have you ever noticed people are much more likely to BUY with a credit card than cash and most everyone has a cellphone . Well, now is your chance to capitalize on this . We will help you sell more & SELL MORE ! You are guaranteed to succeed because we take all the risk . But don't believe us . Mrs Simpson of Delaware tried us and says "My only problem now is where to park all my cars" ! This offer is 100% legal . We implore you - act now ! Sign up a friend and you get half off ! God Bless !

Now, if you copy that text and select the Decode function at Spam Mimic, you'll see that it contains the message "we blow up the zeppelin at midnight".

This is a process called Steganography, or hiding one message in another.

So how effective is wiretapping the entire US when you can do stuff like this? Set up a process with "an associate" that he knows emails from disposable address following a certain naming convention are from you, and you're in business. It's really easy to forge email addresses off of insecure mail relay agents, when I was at the PD we sent one from santa@northpole.com.

Comments

[cardigirl.livejournal.com]

That's a helluva lot of cover text to encode 7 words. And at Spam Mimic, they caution against long messages to avoid repetitiveness (which yours has, even at so short a message).

I've always been keen on codes and cyphers, so I find this of considerable interest. Wiki's piece on hidden photos, though, does more to impress me than the spam site (which is interesting but not compelling).