RCMP suspect al-Qaida messages

[pritchke]

Technology can be a pain in the backside when used by enemies.

OTTAWA (CP) - The RCMP has warned its investigators to be on the lookout for cleverly disguised messages embedded by al-Qaida in digital files police seize from terror suspects.

An internal report obtained by The Canadian Press gives credence to the long-rumoured possibility Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and other extremist groups are using a technique known as steganography to hide the existence of sensitive communications.

Source

Any delay in detecting disguised messages could be disastrous. Do western security agencies have sufficient personnel and resources to uncover the messages?

[ 12-09-2004, 12:29 PM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

[Luvian]

Strange... Why don't they just use emails like everyone else?

[aleph_null1]

Originally posted by Luvian: Strange... Why don't they just use emails like everyone else?

If I'm the NSA, I've got sniffers on all major routers and nodes throughout the world. Text is easy to sort and analyze, and I wouldn't trust any cipher against the resources dedicated to this task.

This trick of obfuscating data in images is just baroque enough that it might work ...

[John D Harris]

Originally posted by aleph_null1: quote: Originally posted by Luvian: Strange... Why don't they just use emails like everyone else?

If I'm the NSA, I've got sniffers on all major routers and nodes throughout the world. Text is easy to sort and analyze, and I wouldn't trust any cipher against the resources dedicated to this task.

This trick of obfuscating data in images is just baroque enough that it might work ... [/QUOTE]If it's not Baroque don't fix it

I'm willing to bet: the Western powers got all kinds of people working on this, after all the West is where computers where invented. We got people that eat, sleep , and poop computers. The problem is not decifering the codes, if they exist, it's getting message in time to decifer it. ie: a message gets sent to some terrorist cell 3 weeks ago, the place gets raided today at 8:30 P.M. and the message is found, the message is to make a terrorist attack tomorrow at 8:00 A.M.