Steganography and BTC -- Making BTC More Private?

[OROBTC]

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I have been interested in finding ways to make the whole Bitcoin Ecosystem™ more private.  Today in the shower (where most of my creative ideas occur to me), I had an idea: (somehow) using steganograpy to hide ways of moving Bitcoin around.  Steganography is the encryption technique of hiding information in a picture, say, transmitting it to the recipient who would then decrypt it.

My idea is not even half-baked.  Nor am I able to capitalize at all on this, so I just toss this out to the community here for discussion.  If this idea has any merit, feel free to run with it at no cost.

A possible example might be to send a Public Key and Private Key tucked away there in a picture of the Grand Canyon.  Email the photo to someone who then can get the BTC.

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[AT101ET]

What would the purpose in this be?
At the end of the day the actual bitcoins you send will be public for all to see on the Blockchain.
You could always try finding your own way of disguising keys and/or sending them to others in an encrypted form (BIP38) for example. However, I don't see how you're going to be able to make bitcoin more private if the whole ecosystem is built on a network that encourages transparency.

[nemgun]

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I have been interested in finding ways to make the whole Bitcoin Ecosystem™ more private.  Today in the shower (where most of my creative ideas occur to me), I had an idea: (somehow) using steganograpy to hide ways of moving Bitcoin around.  Steganography is the encryption technique of hiding information in a picture, say, transmitting it to the recipient who would then decrypt it.

My idea is not even half-baked.  Nor am I able to capitalize at all on this, so I just toss this out to the community here for discussion.  If this idea has any merit, feel free to run with it at no cost.

A possible example might be to send a Public Key and Private Key tucked away there in a picture of the Grand Canyon.  Email the photo to someone who then can get the BTC.

I think that the best thing to do is to convert the  private key to a binary string, and then order them in a multi dimentional array, and then replacing pixels in the picture. However, the recieved and emmiter shall have a dedicated software, or function in wallet, to read the image, and decrypt it using maybe some algorithms for pixel replacements ? or simply convert the private key to a qr code and scatter it using a scheme.

[Kprawn]

Why would I go through all that trouble? I can send a private key to someone without having to know how Steganography work. You break

the private key into say 4 different sections and then send this to someone with 4 different methods. { 1 x email / 1 x FB private message / 1

x SmS via phone / 1 x phone call via land line. } Done. Steganography is just too complicated for most people. 

[nemgun]

Why would I go through all that trouble? I can send a private key to someone without having to know how Steganography work. You break

the private key into say 4 different sections and then send this to someone with 4 different methods. { 1 x email / 1 x FB private message / 1

x SmS via phone / 1 x phone call via land line. } Done. Steganography is just too complicated for most people. 

Ok, i suggest to skip to annother project, but what if the guy you want to send the private key lives in a censored country, where FB TW G+ are forbiden, plus, he don't want to share his phone number because Bitcoin is made for privacy, and he don't want to share his email address because his government filters them ?

[achow101]

Ok, i suggest to skip to annother project, but what if the guy you want to send the private key lives in a censored country, where FB TW G+ are forbiden, plus, he don't want to share his phone number because Bitcoin is made for privacy, and he don't want to share his email address because his government filters them ?

Then how exactly are you going to send him something that has stego in it? Steganography is not a medium communication, you still need something like an email or phone number in order to send something that has stego in it.


Steganography is not useful here. It is very similar to a symmetric encryption scheme and shares many of the same issues. In order to send anything both parties need to know how to decode the data encoded with steganography. The method of decoding has to be transmitted to both parties through a secure channel. At that point, you might as well use that secure channel for your communications as you have already established the secure channel.

[OROBTC]

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Nice contributions, thank you all.  I like starting threads to learn stuff.   

I know ZIP about steganography, but sending pictures out by email, for example, is as common as chicken tracks...

I hear you achow101, that steganography would be clumsy to use, and the symmetry I (barely) understand.

That "secure channel" is an issue though, not much seems secure vs. NSA.

I guess a more general question would be how to make BTC more anonymous, apparently even mixing BTC is not very secure anymore.

[Patatas]

I have been interested in finding ways to make the whole Bitcoin Ecosystem™ more private.  Today in the shower (where most of my creative ideas occur to me), I had an idea: (somehow) using steganograpy to hide ways of moving Bitcoin around.  Steganography is the encryption technique of hiding information in a picture, say, transmitting it to the recipient who would then decrypt it.

Isn't barcode system a type of steganograpy ? What would you want to hide? Transactions ? Private Keys? It is a good encryption practice but again boils down to the same bitcoin ecosystem.Lose a private key and you're done. (a private key would be used to decrypt the image data I believe).

P.s.: Forum should have a "shower-thoughts" board.

My idea is not even half-baked.  Nor am I able to capitalize at all on this, so I just toss this out to the community here for discussion.  If this idea has any merit, feel free to run with it at no cost.

It's not offering any advantaged over the current system and hence,NO!

A possible example might be to send a Public Key and Private Key tucked away there in a picture of the Grand Canyon.  Email the photo to someone who then can get the BTC.

On what basis a user has to decrypt the private key ? Much prone to Man in the Middle Attack?

[Kray]

Yes it's will make bitcoin secure,  but it more harder to process

[Moritz30]

I find this interesting and will definitely do it.

[Kprawn]

Why would I go through all that trouble? I can send a private key to someone without having to know how Steganography work. You break

the private key into say 4 different sections and then send this to someone with 4 different methods. { 1 x email / 1 x FB private message / 1

x SmS via phone / 1 x phone call via land line. } Done. Steganography is just too complicated for most people. 

Ok, i suggest to skip to annother project, but what if the guy you want to send the private key lives in a censored country, where FB TW G+ are forbiden, plus, he don't want to share his phone number because Bitcoin is made for privacy, and he don't want to share his email address because his government filters them ?

Well, then you use different encrypted email service providers or chat services that are allowed in your country. How difficult would it be to

add 1 section of a private key hidden within a bunch of text? You could use 4 Alt accounts or even chat features in games being played

online.  .... The latest steganography forensics tools, will quickly detect hidden messages or text, so you will have to break it into smaller

parts, if you want to make it more difficult to be detected. 

[Moritz30]

I created something like that: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1757900.0