FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

Re: In today's Times - now more stego mythology

------- Forwarded message follows ------- To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk Copies to: Ross.Anderson@cl.cam.ac.uk Subject: Re: In today's Times - now more stego mythology Date sent: Sun, 07 Oct 2001 13:09:37 +0100 From: Ross Anderson <Ross.Anderson@cl.cam.ac.uk> Send reply to: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk

A journalist called me from the Times and told me he'd had a briefing from the security service on steganography. He had a lot of strange ideas, and I spent maybe 30 minutes trying to explain the sort of things that are common knowledge to members of this list. In particular, all we appear to know so far is that the bad guys used plaintext emails, and this is precisely what one expects a competent opponent to do: you do not want to draw attention to yourself by being among the few users of an exotic confidentiality or anonymity service, and in any case normal emails are hidden in just the same way as a pebble on brighton beach (Caspar's analogy).

However, it transpired that he was determined (or had been instructed) to write the story anyway.

The comments ascribed to me in the article in question are simply wrong. I did not at any time suggest that the bad guys would generate cover traffic themselves, merely hide their own emails in the huge volumes of email that exist anyway.

Apart from that, the articles should be seen as a deliberate plant by MI5. The fact that the Times ran them, even after it had been explained to them in detail why their version of events was implausible, seriously undermines the credibility of that paper's news coverage.

Ross Anderson

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