Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » Secret messages hidden in images

January 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Secret messages hidden in images

TAGS: DEMO 07

You may have heard of steganography, an encryption technique that lets you hide embedded messages, documents, etc. within a normal-looking image. Very James Bond. A company at Demo 2007 called Ceelox just introduced something called Scram, which puts "steg" into the hands of everyday users as well as advertisers and businesses. On the business side, Ceelox gave the example of how a company might send a bank statement or patient records to a customer, neatly hidden inside an innocuous looking image (a capability that some vendors already provide, although maybe not as seamlessly). For some users, steganography is probably more accessible than basic encryption.

But the consumer piece of the puzzle may have greater significance as Scram opens the door for user-generated steganography and offers "a secure messaging tool platform for consumers to interact with brands." In a typical scenario, a user can go to the Scram client, type in an email address, encrypt data into any digital image, and hit send. The recipient gets the image in his mailbox, along with instructions on how to authenticate his identity (so only he can view and decrypt it).

Advertisers can take the same approach, using Scram to send out marketing offers, interactive sweepstakes, and potential viral campaigns, all hidden inside an image wrapper that is, in itself, an ad. Those same advertisers can build databases of customers who have viewed and passed along Scram messages. This kind of opportunistic customer acquisition feels a bit unseemly, but I can just see something like a secret message in an image making the email rounds. And Scram works in IM clients as well.

Posted by Steve Fox on January 31, 2007 01:56 PM

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