stegobfusca

The inspiration for “stegofusca” came primarily from the proliferation of digital art (generated by artificial intelligence).

Another indirect influence was the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk in late October 2022.

This latter sparked much noise about freedom of speech and censorship.

But what about freedom of imagery?

Most platforms will detect the use of encryption.  Unless they possess the cipher there is a strong possibility that the communication (in whatever format) will be blocked.

But there may be a window of opportunity to use image creation software to achieve a level of confidentiality?

Creating multiple copies of images is relatively easy.  They will all look the same to most humans.

Technology used by large corporations and intelligence services to check on the code “buried” behind the images will still be used.

But for everyday low level personal communications between humans – either one-to-one or within closed groups – then flooding the web with duplicate images of which only one has the “code” in it should be feasible.

Only those who know the “cipher” and which of those images holds the message will be able to access the communication.

It’s obfuscation and “hiding in plain sight”.

It offers the possibility of “one time passwords” – so it’s not perfect.

No system is.

Look at Bletchley Park and cracking Enigma.

Human frailty, ego, arrogance, laziness, formal dictats and repetitive behaviour helped “crack” that.

But for now we can bury our messages in images using…..

stegobfusca