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Anamorphic encryption against dictators - hiding message inside normal looking ciphertext (eprint.iacr.org)

submitted 8 months ago by hematite@programming.dev to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I want to share an interesting cryptography paper which introduces "anamorphic encryption", where the ciphertext encrypts two messages. One is a message to reveal to a dictator, who wants the secret key and message to control the narrative. Behind it lies a hidden message, guarded behind a "double key", which is to communicate messages of intent secretly.

It's kind of like having a duress key to reveal, but instead you can send real messages with the real key.

For instance, an investigative journalist could encrypt a fake message "Everyone is content in our utopia" as a smokescreen to show to the dictator, while true messages like "Minorities are forced into labor camps" can be hidden in the anamorphically encrypted ciphertexts to notify the outside free press.

The authors argue that cryptosystems already in use supports the anamorphic mode, where you encrypt a normal-looking ciphertext which contains the hidden message.

Given that it has been 3 years since this paper, I think there would have been some applications of this technology. Do you guys know of any?

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not sure about that, but this is basically a few clever tricks where you have two file systems in one volume. Obviously if the volume is, say, 10 gigs, you can only store 10 gigs in total on those filesystems, as they share the space.

You also, likely, wouldn't want to fill up the drive too much

I don't know what happened to it, I recall that, years ago, they found various weaknesses in the system but instead of fixing it, it seemed to be abandoned. I'll start looking around if he there are updated open source versions

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Wouldn't it then be a simple matter to notice that a 10gb for only yielded 5gb of "innocent" data after decryption?

Especially since it would be (I assume) simple to 'predict' the size of the ("unnested") plaintext if the cipher and key is known

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago

Found it: https://www.truecrypt.org/

All the questions you have can be answered there. I haven't used it for over 5 years, so honestly I don't recall what it can ans can't do, but I do remember that you could have a hidden volume somewhere