Dutch forensic institute working on methods to uncover criminals' hidden messages
The Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) is working on ways to detect steganography - secret ways in which criminals exchange information through digital images and videos. United in the project Uncover, the NFI, and other European investigative services and companies are trying to find better ways to detect, for example, a secret code in the color values of a digital picture showing where drugs are hidden, NOS reports.
Meike Kombrink of the NFI described steganography as a mixture of art and science. “It’s art because it’s creative, but it’s a science because you have to know how to hide it in digital images or videos. You have to understand how it works,” she said to NOS. Unlike communications using encrypted phones, steganography doesn’t only hide the contents of a message but its entire existence.
In the Uncover project, the NFI and its European partners will invest in automated systems that can recognize steganography. “A real step needs to be taken in the detection,” Kombrink said. “We have to make sure that we can keep up with the level of the criminals.”
Steganography isn’t new. In the Second World War, both the Germans and the Allies developed ciphers and tried to find the best invisible ink. The terrorist group al-Qaida also allegedly used steganography to communicate in preparation for the September 11 attacks in 2001.
