Backbone Security has announce availability of a Steganography Detection Policy (SDP) for companies protected by the Fidelis XPS session-level network security solution. The SDP gives Fidelis XPS' customers the capability to detect insiders downloading digital steganography applications on their networks.
Steganography is a method of concealing the existence of data by hiding it within, or appending it to, another file. Unlike encrypting data the way cryptography does, steganography hides the very existence of the data in such a way that it is undetectable under traditional traffic-pattern analysis. Steganography is most often used for malicious purposes such as stealing information or concealing criminal or terrorist activity.
The SDP is based on hash values of file artifacts ("fingerprints") associated with over 850 steganography applications in the Steganography Application Fingerprint Database (SAFDB) developed in Backbone's Steganography Analysis and Research Center. SAFDB is the world's largest commercially available hash set exclusive to digital steganography applications and can be used to determine whether files entering or leaving an enterprise network can be associated with a particular digital steganography application or other data-hiding application.
According to U.S. Department of Justice, the Russian spies recently arrested by the FBI used steganography conceal their electronic communiques with Russian officials in the so-called SVR, a Russian Federation foreign intelligence body. For more on this, see Busted Alleged Russian Spies Used Steganography To Conceal Communications. For more on steganography itself, see Steganography for DOS Programmers.
