Product Description

* Explains exactly what steganography is-hiding a message inside an innocuous picture or music file-and how it has become a popular tool for secretly sending and receiving messages for both the good guys and the bad guys
* First book to describe international terrorists' cybersecurity tool of choice in an accessible language
* Author is a top security consultant for the CIA and provides gripping stories that show how steganography works
* Appendix provides tools to help people detect and counteract stenanography

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Product Details

Publisher	Wiley
ISBN	0471444499
Format	Paperback
Author	Eric Cole
EAN	9780471444497
Label	Wiley
Dewey Decimal Number	005.8
Studio	Wiley
Number Of Pages	360
Title	Hiding in Plain Sight: Steganography and the Art of Covert Communication
Publication Date	2003-04-11
Manufacturer	Wiley

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Customer Reviews

awesome book.

Review by Eric Kent, 2005-06-01

this is the best book on Steganography out there.

cole has a ton of great info.

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Discover The Art of Hiding Data

Review by Tony Bradley, 2005-02-10

Not knowing much other than the definition of steganography before opening this book I found it very easy to read and very informative.

Eric Cole has a background in working with hidden data and his experience is translated into a book that even users new to the concepts of covert communication can understand. The fictionalized stories of actual events help the reader to understand how these tools are used every day by both the good guys and the bad guys.

The book covers a basic history and background of cryptography and digital watermarking as well as steganography and then gets into more detail about the techniques and concepts of "stego". It does provide source code, but may not be "meaty" enough for steganography experts.

(...)

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Good, but basic, and the editor should be fired.

Review by M. Karapcik, 2004-12-24

The information is quite good, though not very in depth. The examples are good, as they explain, "See, this really *can* be used in 'real life'." There is also some programming information, so for some parts (nothing critical, just program design), a knowledge of C is useful. Personally, this is my first book on steganography, so the technicality of the information was at a good level (informative, but not buried in jargon or advanced math). I have no programming background, but skipping the program designs was not a detriment in any way.

However... I think the editor should be bludgeoned once or twice with something heavy. I have written some documentation, and the editor did things that I know never to do. First, there are a few grammatical errors, which cause serious problems if you are not paying attention. (In one example, it is said the user (I don't have the book in front of me) "attaches her private PGP key, encrypts it with [the other's] public PGP key, and sends the email". This is after saying many times "NEVER EVER SHARE YOUR PRIVATE PGP KEY!!!". Then, the example goes on to say the recipient "uses the public PGP key, which is attached...". (The first sentence should have read "public PGP key"). In addition to one or two other situations like this, there is also an issue with the inline images. They all appear only at the top and bottom of the page, while the author clearly intends for some to be in paragraphs. The author says things like "as seen in this image:", but the sentence continues, and "this image", the number of which is not given, is elsewhere on the page. Further, many images have the eight resize anchor points and thick border visible from screen shots; these should have been Photoshop'ed out (it's not that hard, I've done it with Paintbrush).

If you are looking for advanced work, skip this. For a basic work, I would give it five stars, but the editors errors are so bad....

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Silly editing mistakes and empty information.

Review by Nick Veys, 2004-09-01

Call me silly for expecting more from this. This book rollercoasters from the wildly vague overview to the distractingly specific detail and back again. The author shows promise in writing style but the editing needs some work. Typos and silly mistakes like the majority of the second half of the book's images appear taken from a Word document (or similar) while selected (border, drag handles overlayed) and LOTS of white space.

And how useful is 80 pages of printed source code? The CD is included, just save the trees and my shelf space please.

The author is a seemingly public figure (TV show appearances, etc) so I guess you can only expect so much.

If you're looking for meat on the topic, don't bother. If you want a basic overview in a weekend read, go for it.

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An excellent book on steganography

Review by Tariq, 2004-05-28

First of all I would like to congratulate you on finishing the amazing book "Hiding in plain sight". It is really a state of art. You really covered the major part of steganography if not all. I really enjoyed reading your book.

Looking forward to your next publication.

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