CSTEG: TALKING IN C CODE - Steganography of C Source Code in Text

Jorge Blasco Alís, Julio Cesar Hernandez-Castro, Juan M. E. Tapiador, Arturo Ribagorda Garnacho

2008

Abstract

Cryptographic software has suffered in many ocassions from export restrictions. Governments might claim that cryptographic algorithms are equivalent to military equipment to justify and maintain these restrictions. Sometimes, these laws are approved under dictatorial rules or even by democratric goverments which exploit and overstimate a terrorist menace to restrict civil rights. Citizens have evaded these restrictions in many ways: handwriting the program’s source code and then typing it again, printing the source code in a t-shirt, using some kind of steganographic technique, etc. In this paper, we present a system called CSteg that hides source code into plain text by using context-free grammars. This presents the additional advantage that under some laws plain text is protected (and its exportation allowed) by free-speech and/or intellectual property legislation.

References

  1. Bernstein, D. (1992). Bernstein case web page. http:// cr.yp.to/export.html.
  2. Castro, J. C. H., Lopez, I. B., Tapiador, J. M. E., and Garnacho, A. R. (2006). Steganography in games. Computers and Security, 25(1):64-71.
  3. Simmons, G. J. (1996). The history of subliminal channels. In Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Information Hiding, pages 237-256.
  4. Vincent Rijmen, P. S. L. M. B. (2008). The Anubis Block Cipher. http://paginas.terra.com.br/ informatica/paulobarreto.
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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Blasco Alís J., Cesar Hernandez-Castro J., M. E. Tapiador J. and Ribagorda Garnacho A. (2008). CSTEG: TALKING IN C CODE - Steganography of C Source Code in Text . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2008) ISBN 978-989-8111-59-3, pages 399-406. DOI: 10.5220/0001925403990406


in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt08,
author={Jorge Blasco Alís and Julio Cesar Hernandez-Castro and Juan M. E. Tapiador and Arturo Ribagorda Garnacho},
title={CSTEG: TALKING IN C CODE - Steganography of C Source Code in Text},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2008)},
year={2008},
pages={399-406},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0001925403990406},
isbn={978-989-8111-59-3},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT, (ICETE 2008)
TI - CSTEG: TALKING IN C CODE - Steganography of C Source Code in Text
SN - 978-989-8111-59-3
AU - Blasco Alís J.
AU - Cesar Hernandez-Castro J.
AU - M. E. Tapiador J.
AU - Ribagorda Garnacho A.
PY - 2008
SP - 399
EP - 406
DO - 10.5220/0001925403990406