Hidden or Scrambled? — TechKnowSurge

About this interactive

The Steganography lesson compares two ways of concealing a message. Cryptography encrypts the plaintext into ciphertext. Anyone who sees the ciphertext can tell it is a coded message, but with a good algorithm and key they cannot read it; turning it back takes the key. Steganography hides the message inside something ordinary. The lesson hides the word secret in a paragraph, as the first letter of every second word. In a picture, each pixel's red, green and blue values are 8 bits each. Changing the leftmost bit would change the color a lot and give the game away, but changing the last bit, the least significant one, makes no visible difference. String those last bits together and they carry the message. A text file, a video or an audio file can carry one too. The trade-off: a stego picture is easy to overlook, because nobody suspects it, while ciphertext invites an attacker to start working on it. But a message hidden by steganography alone can be pulled out once someone knows it is there, while good encryption stays unreadable without the key. A quick test for each card: is the secret that a message exists, or what the message says?

What you'll learn

Tell steganography, which hides that a message exists, from cryptography, which scrambles what the message says
Recognize the trade-off the lesson draws: a hidden message is easily overlooked but easy to read once found, while good encryption stays unreadable without the key even when it is found

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

1.4 Explain the importance of using appropriate cryptographic solutions.

ISC2 CISSP

3.6 Select and determine cryptographic solutions

NIST NICE

K0884 Knowledge of covert communication tools and techniques

Key terms

Steganography: The practice of concealing a message within another medium, such as an image or sentence, so its existence is hidden rather than its content scrambled.
Cryptography: The practice of securing information by transforming it into an unreadable format using mathematical algorithms.
Least Significant Bit: The lowest-value bit in a binary number, located at the far right, whose modification causes the smallest possible change to the overall value and is used in steganography to embed hidden data with minimal perceptible alteration.
Ciphertext: The scrambled, unreadable output produced after plaintext has been encrypted using a cipher.

Topics

Steganography Cryptography Interactive Streak Sort

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