Steganography from weak cryptography

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel steganographic approach where messages are hidden within encryption keys, enabling covert communication even when the recipient must cryptanalyze ciphertexts without prior key knowledge.

Contribution

It introduces the 'freedom fighters' problem' setting and a steganographic method that hides messages in encryption keys, with initial security analysis.

Findings

Proposed a new steganographic protocol for key hiding

Demonstrated the protocol with an example implementation

Provided a partial security analysis of the method

Abstract

We introduce a problem setting which we call ``the freedom fighters' problem''. It subtly differs from the prisoners' problem. We propose a steganographic method that allows Alice and Bob to fool Wendy the warden in this setting. Their messages are hidden in encryption keys. The recipient has no prior knowledge of these keys, and has to cryptanalyze ciphertexts in order to recover them. We show an example of the protocol and give a partial security analysis.