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Hello everyone, my name is Sean Marcia, and today I want to share an intriguing story related to crypto steganography.
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Does the name Daniel or Henrik mean anything to anyone here? I wonder if I mentioned their last name was Sedin. They are identical twins who grew up in a small town in Sweden. They played hockey together on the same teams from when they were kids until they recently retired.
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There was something almost like Twin Magic about them; they were amazing hockey players who made extraordinary plays. I suggest you Google them and watch some of their highlights on YouTube. During their career in the NHL, they won multiple trophies, including the Art Ross Trophy for the highest scorer and the Most Valuable Player award.
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A fun fact: In Sweden, they award the Golden Puck award for the Most Valuable Player, and the year they were in the league, they awarded it to both twins because they couldn't choose just one. This was the only time before or since that this has happened.
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While you may not be familiar with them, there’s another hockey player who made it all the way to the NHL—Wayne Gretzky. Many people have only ever heard of his older brother, but I’m glad everyone here has heard of Brent, Wayne's younger brother. The Sedin brothers scored over 2,000 points in their careers.
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As dominant as they were, Wayne also holds the record with Brent for the most points scored by two brothers in the NHL, totaling 2,861 points. While Brent contributed four points, Wayne scored a staggering 2,857 points. We’re all heroes in our own stories, so for the rest of my talk, please think of me as Wayne Gretzky.
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I'm going to be talking about pictures today. I went down a bit of a rabbit hole on Wikipedia, clicking through links that eventually led me to philosophy. A couple of interesting pictures I wanted to share include one from the Blombos Caves in South Africa, which is one of the earliest known images created.
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The second picture is of the first commercially available camera, and the third one is the first digital camera, which astonishingly took 16 batteries! I find myself wondering if I need to explain what a camera is—am I dating myself?
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Now, let me address the elephant in the room: yes, this is yet another talk on crypto steganography. But if I can be serious for a moment, this talk shares a story that is stranger than fiction, sprinkled with some insights and information.
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Given the state of the world right now, with so much negativity happening, I thought, what kind of talk would I like to hear? And this is the kind of talk I would attend. So, if you're interested in hearing an entertaining story, you're in the right place. If this doesn't sound interesting to you, though, I won’t take offense if you choose to leave.
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Now, hey, I'm Sean, I use he/him pronouns, and I'm excited to chat with you about crypto steganography. I do want to set a little expectation: this talk will be less code-heavy compared to many other RailsConf talks. I’m here mostly because I have an intriguing story to tell.
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I've even built in time for you to burst out in uncontrollable applause during my talk, so feel free to show your appreciation at any moment.
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To introduce myself, here are four fun facts about me: First, I'm originally from Canada. Second, like all Canadians, I enjoy playfully trolling people. Third, about one in four people appreciate my sense of humor. And fourth, if you've heard of me, it’s probably because of Ruby for Good, a nonprofit I created that builds and maintains software for other nonprofits.
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You know, organizations like food banks and animal shelters who desperately need our skill set but can’t afford it. If this is something you're interested in, please come and find me afterward!
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I also want to acknowledge the stress and pressure the organizers of this conference are under. If you see an organizer, or even if you don’t, please find one and thank them for their hard work. Max, who couldn't be here today, is awesome! If everyone tweets something great about Max, I’ll give you a Ruby for Good sticker. And if you say something really nice, I even have limited-edition Ruby for Good socks with red pandas!
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I hope everyone is taking care of themselves and practicing self-care, especially since we are all still feeling the effects of COVID-19. This has been quite a time for everyone, and many people have spoken to me about how COVID got out of control due to political strife, but I don't buy that.
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I understand that I shouldn't usually discuss politics, but remember when a new world leader was elected five or six years ago? I felt truly proud to have a leader who represented me well on the world stage.
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And I was thrilled when he won re-election last fall, hoping Canada would continue to lead the way in vaccination rates.
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Now, jokes aside, the pandemic has disrupted my sense of time. Take last summer, when we watched the 2020 Olympics—held in 2021—where it was such a joy to feel the world coming together despite the empty stadiums.
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It was inspiring to see fellow Canadian athletes trolling their teachers, and I mentioned how humor is a part of Canadian culture. It’s amazing to watch world-class competitors, such as Penny or Michael Phelps, achieve greatness—as they are phenomenal athletes.
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As much as I enjoy swimming, my favorite sport is curling. If you’ve never watched curling, I can assure you it’s fantastic. It requires strategy, teamwork, and skill. But for me, the real reason I enjoy curling is that I feel I could actually compete at that level!
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I know I may not be inspiring, but seeing elite athletes makes me think I, too, could do it. Kevin Martin, one of the best curlers from Canada, exemplifies what can be achieved.
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Another reason I like curling is that my dogs, Taffy and Roadie, love to sit on the couch with me and enjoy it as well. When I rescued them, I originally intended to adopt one dog, but they were inseparable and came as a bonded pair. Once I saw them together, I was smitten!
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My dogs are quirky; for instance, my little dog likes to play hide-and-seek, but he’s not great at it because of his anxiety. My other dog just loves to sit beside me and yawn when I yawn.
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However, not just dogs can be quirky—people can be too! A little while ago, I opened an email from a quirky friend. In it, there was no subject line, no content, just an attachment of a picture from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
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At first, I thought it was strange but did not think too much of it. After a few days, I received another email with a picture from the science fiction show Babylon 5, which I consider one of the best.
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A few days later, yet another picture from the cult classic Firefly appeared in my inbox—again, devoid of context, which left me puzzled further.
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As the pictures continued to come in, I tried to figure out what was happening. I tried reaching out to him via text and email, but there was silence from his end. Out of desperation, I called him, only to hear him act as if he had no clue what I was talking about.
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In my search for answers, I called a mutual friend and asked, 'What’s up with this person?' He began to dig around and came back with a cryptic comment: 'Everything you need to know is in the pictures.'
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Being a fan of these shows, I initially thought the answer lay within them. I poured over IMDb, researching actors and storylines, trying to figure out what was going on without any luck.
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I even began watching iconic episodes, trying to find a clue or connection to the pictures. But as time went on, I generated many theories, none of which gave me a solid answer.
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My mutual friend continued to be invested in the mystery, and we discussed possibilities together. Eventually, my friend, whom I'll refer to as Brad, became more willing to share, perhaps because he had done something clever and wanted to share it.
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Before I go on, let me explain how I came to know Brad. Back in 2003, I received an unexpected call from our mutual friend, asking me if I'd like to fill in for someone on their curling team that evening. My initial reaction was to get offended at the stereotype that I, as a Canadian, might know how to curl.
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But, despite having not curled in six years, I agreed to help the team out, and long story short, we won! They liked me so much that they invited me to become a permanent member of the team, as the player I replaced didn't want to continue.
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This person I replaced was Brad himself. For a while, we formed a great team and had fun. But competition has ups and downs; it's much more enjoyable to play and win than to constantly lose week after week.
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Being on a team that was successful fostered more social gatherings and discussions about curling. Brad, feeling that he wanted back into the curling group, began making attempts to reconnect with us.
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Meanwhile, I actively encouraged everyone else to watch curling during the Olympics, holding viewing parties and such. During this period, we had our fair share of wins, particularly during the Olympics.
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As we watched together, there were certain Olympiads where Canada consistently came out on top, which made the anticipation for the 2018 Olympics even higher among our friends, including myself.
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Coincidentally, this was around the same time Brad had been sending me those mysterious images. Now, let’s get back to the pictures that had been appearing in my inbox frequently.
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What Brad meant when he said, 'It wasn't the exact pictures that mattered but what was inside them,' was that he had embedded secret messages within them. I initially thought they were like Magic Eye pictures, where you have to stare at them to reveal something hidden.
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I even connected my computer to my large TV, staring intensely at the images for far too long, but they weren't Magic Eye pictures. After coming up empty-handed with my guesses, I decided to consult the all-knowing Google.
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That’s when I stumbled upon the term 'crypto steganography,' which refers to the practice of hiding information in plain sight. This concept has roots going back over 2,500 years, when people hid secrets within already existing text or images.
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I learned about ancient Greeks using wax tablets to transfer important messages without it being visible. They would write on wax and then cover it, allowing them to send hidden communications.
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For instance, when Persia was planning to invade Greece, Greek agents would write notes on these wax tablets, cover it, and send them back to warn their countrymen.
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They would also tattoo messages on the heads of slaves, which were hidden by their hair, allowing them to carry critical troop movements back to Greece. I attempted to find more images related to these ancient practices, but could only find unrelated content.
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Steganography has evolved, with earlier historical examples we all shared as kids, like writing with lemon juice and revealing messages with heat. If you happen to be in Washington, D.C., there's a Spy Museum filled with fascinating applications of steganography.
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From fabric that hides Morse code to hidden messages under stamps—modern examples still preserve the art of sending secret communications.
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However, steganography has a known weakness; it relies on security by obscurity. If someone knows there's concealed information, they'll look for it. This is where cryptography, the science of encoding messages, comes into play.
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Cryptography traces back to ancient times, where one of the earliest known ciphers was used by Julius Caesar to safeguard messages. Modern technology amplifies this endeavor greatly, allowing a trove of information to be stored within images.
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Today's malware threats often employ steganography as a vector to conceal executable code, making it essential for our industry to recognize evolving attack methods.
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Many researchers suggest that for embedding information securely, you should embed it into a stream that looks random, making it hard to discover.
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Back to the pictures I received from Brad—there was indeed embedded information within them! Remember how I mentioned that altering the least significant bits of an image could conceal a message? Let’s delve into how that process of hiding information works.
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Images consist of colors made up of pixels, with each pixel comprised of three colors: red, green, and blue. The values for these colors range from 0 to 255, and that includes binary representations of information.
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By tweaking the least significant bit of those pixel values from 0 to 255, we can change a color slightly without a visible difference. The human eye does not generally perceive those minimal changes.
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So how do we embed information in a picture? By manipulating these least significant bits in an image's colors to represent bytes of text tied to ASCII character representations.
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Returning once again to those interesting pictures, I finally had their embedded messages decoded. You may remember Brad sent several pictures that I believed contained hidden information.
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Ultimately, the messages leading up to the Olympics were laced with disparaging comments about Canada, my curling abilities, and how it was America’s time to shine in curling during that Olympic cycle.
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Following the Olympics, the messages transformed to emphasize the score differential from that competition, with frequent reminders about how the USA actually won.
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It taught me a valuable lesson about rivalry and that winning sometimes can feel ecstatic or bitter all in one moment—especially in competitive sports. In sports, stories often teach us a moral.
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So, my takeaway from this experience is that it seemed the Canadian curling team was sabotaged in 2018. I even suspect that the world curling ‘Illuminati’ conspired against us!
