http://www.techtv.com/news/story/0,24195,3353040,00.html

Fair use for discussion

Secret Messages in Bin Laden Video?

Al Qaeda leader's messages could contain hidden terror instructions, Bush administration warns.

By Maria Godoy, Tech Live October 10, 2001

Printer-friendly format Email this story

The Bush administration fears Osama bin Laden could be issuing orders to terrorists in the United States through videotaped messages being aired on television.

Government investigators are examining in detail a message from bin Laden that aired on US networks over the weekend. The concern is that secret messages could be encoded in either the videotape itself or the words bin Laden speaks.

According to White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has asked US television networks to use discretion when deciding whether or not to air in full tapes produced by bin Laden and the al Qaeda terror group he leads, due to fears the videos could be embedded with secret messages through a process known as steganography.

Fleischer said Rice called the networks to "raise their awareness about national security concerns with airing prerecorded, pretaped messages from Osama bin Laden that could be a signal to terrorists to incite attacks."

"At best, Osama bin Laden's messages are propaganda, calling on people to kill Americans," Fleischer told reporters Wednesday during a White House press briefing. "At worst, he could be issuing orders to his followers to initiate such attacks."

ADVERTISEMENT

Steganography involves hiding messages within messages in such a manner that most observers would not notice anything amiss. The science of steganography has been around since the ancient Egyptians hid messages in wax, but technological advances have made it possible to hide messages in the low-order bits of digital photographs or video.

To transmit a hidden message, the sender uses special software that can hide a text message or a graphical file, such as a building plan, within another file, such as an MP3 audio file.

Fleischer said federal investigators are currently taking the bin Laden video apart frame by frame to look for hidden messages. However, he added that he had no "hard indications" that the videos aired by US and foreign television networks in recent days did indeed contain such hidden messages.

Bin Laden and his al Qaeda associates have been known to use steganography in the past. In February, US and foreign officials said they had found evidence that bin Laden and his associates were hiding maps and photographs of terrorist targets and posting instructions for terrorist activities in sports chat rooms and on pornographic bulletin boards and other websites.

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2001

Answers

See also this thread

-- Anonymous, October 11, 2001