One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [31]
As he always did, he maintained his level of secrecy, only this time he wanted to get all traces of the location of the temple out of his immediate possession. He downloaded the waypoint data and tracks from the GPS to his computer. Then he wiped the memory of the GPS so that it showed no trace of where he had been. He opened his laptop and booted up a very powerful encryption program by means of a sequence of keystrokes. The program itself couldn’t be found by a cursory examination. He pulled the drop-down menu and selected the steganography feature.
The professor had first heard of steganography, or the hiding of messages in otherwise innocent carriers such as pictures or letters, while still an undergraduate student. He had read about the ancient Greeks, where Herodotus tells of hiding a message of Xerxes’ planned invasion underneath the wax of a writing tablet to avoid scrutiny, and the legends of the pirates, where the head of a man was shaved and tattooed with a treasure map that was concealed when the hair grew back.
Later on, while on a dig with a savvy undergraduate of his own, he had been shown the modern usage of the technique. Every computer file, such as JPEG, MP3, or WAV, has unused data streams within itself, basically empty pockets that serve no purpose. The steganography program simply fills up this empty space with the data that one wishes to hide. Thus, while the picture of Aunt Sally still looks like a picture of Aunt Sally, someone who knows there is hidden information within the picture can extract and reconstruct it.
After the program booted up, the professor was asked what he wanted as his carrier file, or the file that would hide the data. He selected three MP3 songs from his hard drive. When asked what he wanted to hide, he selected the GPS data. He continued by selecting AES 256 encryption and the password key. Now, even if the data were to be separated from the songs, it would be encrypted in an algorithm that had never been cracked, and thus would be secure.
In thirty seconds it was done. He was asked if he wanted to create a physical key, and selected “yes.” When prompted, he put a blank thumb drive in the USB port and the computer churned for a few more seconds.
He now had his data securely encrypted and could extract the data both virtually with a password on his computer, which held the steganography program, and physically by inserting the thumb drive into whatever computer held the carrier file, regardless of whether that computer contained the stego program or not. Once the thumb drive registered, it would self-extract the data.
The professor plugged in the phone line and dialed the closest ISP given to him by the front desk. It never failed to amaze him how far and deep the Internet had penetrated. It seemed like it was in more places than indoor plumbing. Once he was connected, he logged onto Hotmail.com and pulled up his account. He typed a short note and e-mailed the songs to his niece in Charleston, South Carolina. Jennifer was an anthropology student, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that she would appreciate the local Mayan music. Still, even if she thought it a little odd, she’d have no idea the information she was helping her uncle to hide.
Three minutes later the e-mail completed sending. He closed out of the Internet, then used a shredding program to erase all traces of his stego activities. Nothing related to the expedition remained on his hard drive.
He gave a sigh of relief and leaned back in his chair. Maybe he should get himself a giant margarita and relax a little bit. As he cataloged the bars in the small town he heard a knock on his door, and his name called out. He nearly passed out