Key point: "Steganography is misunderstood and underrated!"

Am I the only one who thinks that steganography learns you to think out of the box?
Steganography trains your mind to look at problems in different ways and to analyse information sets.
These skills are needed when you don't understand/find the problem or when you can't solve a problem in a conventional way.
When the problem isn't handed to you on a silver platter people automatically conclude it's unsolvable or even worse...'boring',
instead of comming up with ways to find and really understand the problem through analysis.
I think steganos are underrated, and seeing these kind of reactions only confirms my vision.

Steganography isn't that hard if you thoroughly analyse the information presented to you.
This is a skill which not many of us seem to have.

BaRa

Ps: What is your opinion about this?

I was just waiting for this thread to be opened

to put it simple: i just think they suck

they are most of the time uneducative, not realistic and just time killers

i prefer Phas style cryptos, which you can analyse and cryptography is way more educative
you need some maths and you are useful if you want to transmit a message which should not be revealed

sure you learn to think outside the box, but there are plenty of other challenges which can combine it with education
i don't think that stegs aren't popular because it is hard to solve them, but i think they aren't solved because there are just a few who really want to waste time on a 10x10 bmp

i would also suggest that every special challenge which consists of several stages has a little hint if a stegano is involved
so i could stop wasting my time for the other levels if there is a stegano in it (like new year)

i also think that there are too much cryptos and stegs on this side
i would prefer more exploits cause they are in general more educative

PS: this is just my humble opinion

@chameleon: I don't think you understand what I mean by "out of the box"-thinking.

Also, do you have any arguments why steganography 'sucks' besides:
* not realistic
* time killers
* few who really want to waste time on a 10x10 bmp
* there are too much

Because I sense that you just spawned these non-grounded arguments out of dislike of steganography which is based on some other reason.

This is not a personal offence, I just didn't detect any valid arguments.
Greetz BaRa

Perhaps, I should could my mouth shut in future

I was just joking with my initial comment, about forgetting the steganos. For me personally, I really enjoy cryptos and the science ones but thats more to do with my background, and there haven't been many of these recently.

Of the steganos (especially recent ones) ,when I understand what to do, I find them enjoyable, educational and very satisfying when I complete them. There are a lot of steganos and cryptos, and I would really like to see more of the other categories, like the applets, programming and maybe even a long overdue javascript. The more challenges the better, but obviously only those which are original and educational. Perhaps I will finish off some of those challs I have been creating

For me, I find that exploits seem to be far more challenging to find out what to do. There tends to be a lot of guess work and although they can be quite interesting, they are certainly not my favourite.

Everyone is different and the more variety the better.

Anyway thats my 2 pennies worth.

@ BaRa
Just a question : why are you (so) focus on stegano challenges ?
What about crypto, exploit, logic, ... ? Do you think they are not interesting ? Nothing to learn in those sections ?

I personally think stegano challenges are as interesting as others. The first time I came on Bright-Shadows, I didn't
know what stegano was... and now, I'm hoping to get the brown smiley.
I discovered also Exploit challenges, Java, Flash, .... I've learned so many things !

Maybe for many people stegano challenges seem to be hard because there are so many ways of thinking, or too much
informations (open an image in hexa can afraid users because they don't really know where to have a look).

PS : (joke mode) Stop adding stegano challenges : I can't get the smiley !!!

challenge creating point of view:
There were lot's of unexplored ideas in the stegano area. That's why I created so many of them.
Don't forget I also created challenges for other sections

challenge solving point of view:
I don't enter solutions anymore, but I enjoy solving challenges from every category. But I do have to say I haven't found the time lately to solve any challenges anymore.



They are great.


No. Why do you think this? I only keep entering the stegano solutions. Because of this it might seem that I don't have any interrest in other challenges. This is not the case.


There is something to learn in EVERY category!
The only category of challenges where you learn very little (read: little... NOT nothing) are the pure information gathering ones (no personal offence towards you).
True, you learn a little about history and other facts but besides that it's just googling for answers.
I don't consider googling, learning.


Here you describe exactly the problem as I see it. People are afraid of what they don't know.




Greetz BaRa

Hey BaRa

On the one hand you're awfully right but on the other I don’t agree with you (at least not totally…):

I always ask myself what kind of people are visiting bright-shadows.net. Ok some might immediately answer: “hackers”, no but honestly I don’t consider myself nor anyone of us a “hacker” or something similar. (simply because it sounds rather clumsy.) To my mind we’re high-educated mathematicians who enjoy the act of logical thinking. Maybe there are some of you who are driven by pure idealistic ideas (Free Software Society,…) or others here just for fun or whatever but that’s not so important what puts us in motion to spend our spare-time with challenges.
Speaking for the majority I can say that just solving complicated quests does not fully satisfy us. Ok we are proud of the results but what we really want is the acknowledgement of our environment. Just read TBS’ signature !! I cannot express it in a more precise way!

Therefore we are looking for things to impress people. For instance gathering access for protected pages, finding out passwords from executables, calculating amazing things (see programmings, then you will know what I mean), etc … ( and not fishing out a solution word from a huge bunch of pixels…)
prehensile concepts, that what people are interested at...

This is real fun! It’s close to reality, and a lot of people are astonished of what you have achieved. Everybody was sure it was secure, but YOU prove them otherwise. And you become even more eager to learn more and get better

So, we are sacrificing hour after hour working through the different group of challenges. I think most of us are still attending school, studying at university, etc... (am i right ?? I would really like to know what you guys are doing for a life but that’s another topic....). That means our time is limited and our patience fades away the longer we sit on a challenge without a goal in sight. And that’s what steganography is about: Considering dozens of possibilities which might SOME DAY lead to a solution. Moreover, you become angry and furious because you get lost in the jungle of likelihoods. Just an example: I had a look on the new stegano “Evil lizard”. I found out different things which encouraged me to go on searching for the final solution. Now I’m stuck at a picture, where I have no clue what to do next. You focus on a few things and as time passes you cannot get rid of this fucking riddle. Then you see the ratings: Evil Lizzard is rated 1.5 concerning the difficulty and that just inflames you additionally. And in the end, maybe being drunken at a party, you accidentally stumble over a tiny thing, and voila: solved.
To my mind, you haven’t won anything… BaRa is right when he says you need to learn the approach of “unsolvable tasks” but tons of steganos aren’t the right answer if you ask me. There is no main pattern or structure behind them, since you can invent everything. When one solves such a challenge one distinguishes between “Yup that could be a way to solve it” or “Nope, that would be too difficult, this cannot be the right way” And that’s not good, for it is about guessing. From the other point of view, real programming problems or mathematical questions require a logical list of steps. They ask for experience, skills, education and creativity ! (and these are the significant things we're are voting after having done a challenge) You always know what you are looking for: So you can start to work out a recipe! Each step brings you closer to the solution and you can see how the whole project proceeds… This gives hope and inspires you! You store your achievements and refer to them in future, this makes you strong and powerful.
Or have a look at the crackMe’s: First you must learn how a central processing unit works. Than you have to understand assemblercode and then you can approach the challenges: You have a look at the code, then you try to imitate it and finally you get the solution since you have understood the system. This enables you to go on, due to your experience you have gained that now helps you for the more difficult ones. And that’s not all: With this knowledge you can make your own programs more secure, you can use your assembler skills for a lot of other problems ( I think of electrical systems, controlled by a processor, even here your cracking skills are worthy since you know about assembler) Therefore, I also agree with a few cryptos because you can use this knowledge some day. But what is completely senseless are challenges like “I am a drug addict”, “WibleWoble”, “MoveIt”,….. Do you know what I mean ? We aren’t a riddle page, we are BRIGHT-SHADOWS. There are a few Steganos which are really useful: “Feel the Beat”, “How to view me”, “Not everything is like it seems.” Because here we learn something very useful! (I can only refer to challenges I have solved at the moment, so there are certainly a few more…) Everybody is able to simply hide information but to do it in a reality-relevant way is what we need to know here. No immoderate and excessive abstraction ! The uncertainty and ambiguity have to perish from the challenges, wouldn’t you agree ??? They make these challenges so boring and lengthily.

I know you have to think abstractly and intangibly sometimes but this should not become priority !!

Just my opinion…
– magdeburg

edit : magdeburg beated me to it so see this as a reply to bara

not to say that there should be more information gathering, or that it is worth it's own category. But learning how to search is a vital skill in todays world. It's not as mutch knowledge as a skill. For you and me it's probably automatic by now.

But for 13 year olds discovering the internet it might not be ..

this guy "Fravia" can probably explain all this better than me

However i fear i'm going a bit of topic again. I don't feel that stegano is overated, yet there are 9 challenges of the latest stegano's that were solved by 5 or less. Indicating that either there just are too many and nobody is attempting them, or there just isn't anybody intresting in yet another stegano, or even that they are to difficult to be enjoyed by at least half a dozen users.


This is not about stegano's being EVIL but about being over represented. And causing extra headaches to challengers with other favourite categories. I'm sure you will comment that i shouldn't do it for the rankings, however there are rankings. I bet if you remove the rankings all together you will see that they are an important motivator for challengers.

@magdeburg: Thanks for taking the time to reply.
You argumented your opinion well, and I respect that.
I agree with the majority of it.


@rhican:
I forgot about the n00bs vs. google. Thanks for reminding me.

Greetz BaRa