Does anyone have any experience with covert messaging techniques and cyphers?

originally posted by: nonspecific
a reply to: projectvxn

Thanks for the advice.

I got a little carried away with something for a while, I am a conspiracy nut and all

No thing…

Ever see Three Days of the Condor?

Its just a movie and all, but was made about oil interests and cia skullduggery surrounding it, back in 1975.

a reply to: nonspecific

I know of a few methods that I use for hiding a message in plain sight.

1. Comments in a web page or code block. You wouldn't see the message unless you were looking at the code for the web page. I'm also a fan of the size .10 font where the text color is the same as the background.

2. Hide a message in an image. The message is usually in a color that is slightly lighter or darker than the surrounding color. To get the message, darken or lighten the downloaded image.

3. If you are trying to get a particular audience, and are a somewhat decent writer, you can use "doublespeak" to relay a specific message to someone, while presenting something completely different to a user.

IE:


...
I went up to the door
who knew if it was on the 4th floor?
Room 476, I entered quick!
To scare the owner for a Halloween Trick!

And who, but to my surprise
showed me up with a big surprise.
She grimaced at me, and said shyly
"The number you seek is 473"


Now, apart from the obvious fact that I am bad with poetry, to an average user, a nice little poem. Say I leave that poem out for a spy that needs to be able to open a safe in a particular hotel room. I told them:
1. Which floor the room was on.
2. Which room the safe was in.
3. The 3-digit code for the safe.

4. To hide something in plain sight, make another object obvious! I sometimes like to leave a random stream of numbers and letters in the open, while having the real message elsewhere. Everyone always goes for the random number stream.

5. Make up your own language, and only teach it to the people you want to be able to decipher a message.

Any of these help?

-foss

Well, what do you need?

#!/bin/perl -sp0777i

Do you feel comfortable elaborating on what exactly it is. I had to decipher cryptic puzzles off of TV , spoken word and symbols , numbers sometimes stood for stuff. Look for puzzles in pop culture and art, the metaphor. If you talk about what's giving you trouble maybe ATS can help you out?