hi bara

you forgot the most important reason for disliking steganos in your summary:
- uneducative

and i must disagree with magdeburg
there are some that are solving this stuff for impressing people but i don't think so
there is just 1 reason for me to do this stuff: to gain knowlegde
sure this is a nice community and stuff, but i'm not impressed of the top10 nor do i think that i could impress any other

if you look at that reason you should easily see my reason for disliking stegs
you can look at it in many ways but the core problem is that the knowledge you gain is disproportionate to the time you must use

there are much more things to learn for me. so every minute i spent on a challenge without gaining something is simply wasted.

and maybe i really don't understand what thinking outside the box means
but imo this should imply that i leave my normal ways of thinking and discover new ways
this is something i can achieve in many ways, like reading books and poets and i don't need any stegs for it

the main problem i have with stegs is: i don't see the goal
if i have a problem and need a new way to solve it i still know what my goal is
so i don't think i can use any gained knowledge for real stuff, so it is not realistic to me

again this is not meant to offend you bara, i appreciate your work in doing new challenges
but if you really want to help us, write a tutorial on how to solve a steg
you could ask many tbs user and almost nobody can give you a clear answer, but imo there are some methods

Consider my post as the opinion of a noob
I like computers. I like programming. A few years ago I was even selling my programs for $1 each (sold only a few though ), but I felt good since I had created something useful.
After the first time playing what many people called "wargames", I was really impressed that in the IT world there are things other than programming but really interesting. I registered at some popular sites and finally came here. This site is very different from the others, it has so many challenges divided in a variety of categories. I knew that my life will never be boring no more.
Besides many popular types of challenges like programming, java(script), exploit, I also found that crypto and stegano are very interesting and cannot be found anywhere else as many as in here. They are very educational for me. While researching about crypto, I found it very interesting that breaking secret messages played an important part in WW2. I also thought of putting some crypto inside my programs to protect them from being cracked. However, I aggree that it's really hard to get a crypto smiley here no matter how hard I tried
About stegano, I was really amazed that a simple image can contain almost everything in it. Treasure hunting was my favourite game when I was a kid. However they are very hard for me so I haven't solved much I would be glad to see a tutorial about that (maybe written by BaRa, since he's the stegano master)
One more thing is that when I first came here I thought I could solve all challenges by reading the forum. There were so many good hints there and if you think about them logically you can solve a challenge with pleasure. However recently I feel like people don't like giving out hints. I can't imagine why there are so many people solved this chall which I think very hard to solve alone.
That's it for my 1 cent. Happy challenge solving everyone

I'm planning to write a stegano tutorial series.
I just don't have the time for this at the moment.
Maybe this summer.

Greetz BaRa

BaRa's stegano's are rather difficult.. simply because you do not know where to start. Since BaRa already admitted that the title most of the times means nothing.. i think BaRa already increases the difficulty of the stegano.

For example, if you create a stegano with the name "Stegano Reloaded", well "Reloaded" should ring a bell by most people, so you can guess what it is about. Of course, it is still a difficult challenge.. but you rule out all those useless filters in Photoshop or whatever image program you need. Now let us take the title "Evil Lizzard".. well.. *emptiness*.

I think if the stegano's where accompied by a small hint or just a push in the right direction it would be easier to solve.

I must say though that some of BaRa's idea's are really fun, but we can't move inside his mind to see what he was thinking while making the challenge. Maybe the best comparison can be made with: sdfhakw34uiyr5982yrjahefjkwe.

Good luck.

/me goes to the library and grab some psychology books

Most of my challenges contain hints. The ones that don't come with hints I consider doable after analysis.

A little request to all the ones who have solved my challenges. If you found a challenge too difficult, please
post a message on the 'AFTERWARDS' discussion forum of that particular challenge with a hint that you
would have found usefull and not spoiling at the time.
If any good hints pop up, I'll adjust the challenge or post them when I find the time.

Greets BaRa

Hi,

i have to agree with most of the previous poster. First time i was active @ tbs, which is almost one year ago, i tried the steganos...i tried them hard and seriuos and with some hints i was able to solve most of them in a more or less amount of time. But now i feel not more interested in Steganos.

Like many other i dont see the start (in most cases)...work with the image ? Work with the image in binary data ? Work with Alpha, Color-Channels..whatever...I could waste one Month or more on a single Stegano w/o doing any progress, time i dont have anymore...additionally I miss the fun.and the education...The very first Steganos at TBS are straightforward but they become more and more creative, no way to solve them w/o a serious hint from the author (e.g. The long Forgotten Game). Maybe iam just to old for "Out of the Box thinking" which maybe make the Stegnos easier, but if I start to think out of the box, i could try one Million crazy things again...again waste of time.

And like many others i feel more proud after i solved one of Caesums (Crypro-Training Program) or Phas (KPTAx KCTAx) Crypto challenges than a stegano, because this is realistic. So for me its simple: If i have done all other Challanges here .and if i have time to waste, i *maybe* try some steganos, as long as this is not the case i leave them alone

Ray

Hello,

I absolutely have to agree to rayden5 in this point.
For most of the new stegos you dont see any start, with others you get something, at least you think so but you cannot finish without a hint from someone who already solved the chall.
I admit BaRa submitted a few very good ones (I only can speak of those I've already solved) where you definetly can find a starting point. But for some, even after having looked at it for some time, I cannot find any clue what to do. Maybe I really havent analyzed everything, but after looking for hours at the hex values, at rgb, ... it becomes just too boring and I try a crackit or something else then.
And because of that I dont even look at e.g. "The long forgotten game" because I see that only very few people solved it and I think most (all?) of them got a hint either by BaRa or by someone who solved it.
Where's the fun in that?

Just my 2 cent.

matrixman

My opinion in 10 steps:

1. Steganography can be good, funny and educational.

2. For me steganography is hiding information (usually inside one image or similar), but I wouldn't consider a stegano every image containing for example just a hidden word, a steganography challenge is when the creator finds a way to hide a complete message into the image, and this method can be reused to hide other messages, longer, shorter, etc without being too obvious. A good example of this could be for example "Around The World [made by BaRa]" or "Did you have coffee today? [made by jmordax]"

3. I'd love to see more realistic stegano challenges, like having some different images, all intercepted from the same recipient and containing different messages.

4. I don't know why people compare BaRa's steganos with Phas' cryptos, they have nothing to do, and we are talking about steganos in this thread.

5. BaRa's steganos use to be very creative, but that is not always enough. As some people said they don't use to be very educational because most of the invented methods if hiding information are not useful at all. They work for just a word and sometimes in a short range of possible words to be hidden. (BTW, I have the same opinion for most of the crypto challenges, but that is another story.)

6. There are some very good BaRa's steganos. Thank you BaRa for doing them.

7. I don't think you always need hints on BaRa's challenges. Most times you only need time and maybe a bit of luck to try the correct thing before you are very tired of trying things.

8. I don't like 80-90% of the steganos at TBS.

9. I'd move most of the steganos and most of the cryptos to a new section "Puzzles"

10. Nothing more to say, but 9 steps sounds ugly so I added this tenth step.

Phas.

This is the reason why I quit creating stegano challenges. There are enough of them and most of the ideas have been milked.

Greetz BaRa