Ancient Steganography

Steganography is the art and science of hiding messages in such a way that no one apart from the sender and intended receiver can realize that a hidden message even exists. It is basically a process of hiding a secret message in another message. There are basically two different types of steganography: physical steganography and digital steganography, which has only been around for about thirty years with the invention of personal computer technology. Digital steganography is still relatively known and constant research is being conducted to further the development of this wonderful tool. Digital steganography involves hiding messages within the images, sound files, text documents, emails, and etc. You can also embed pictures in video material and other pictures, such as jpegs. You can also use encryption and steganography together to make a message ever harder to decipher. One can conceal the information within encrypted data, but the only problem is that this will draw attention to the document/file because you can see the data in its encryption form so you know that there is a meaning and a message to be deciphered.
I find Ancient steganography to be the most fascinating because the idea and concept can be dated back to Ancient Greece. Although there was no actual term “steganography”, the concept was the same. Steganography first appeared in Herodotus’, The Histories, the story of the war between the Persian Empire and the Greek City-States. He wanted to instigate a revolt against the Persians so he shaved the head of his best messenger and wrote/tattooed a message on his scalp. Once the hair fully grew in he sent the messenger on his way and when the messenger arrived to his destination he shaved his head and pointed it directly towards the receiver to read the message. It sounds so simple and easy, but in fact it is a brilliant idea and almost virtually impossible to figure out because no one would think to look there or even think of the idea in the first place. Other types of physical steganography included hidden messages on tablets covered with wax, hidden messages wrote in invisible ink on messenger’s bodies and special papers, and microdot images. These are all actual techniques used in past history; ranging from Ancient Greece to World War I and II. Microdots are actually very fascinating tools because they are images and texts compressed to the size of a period on a piece of paper, which can be seen with heavy duty magnifying glasses and telescopes. Physical steganography is a brilliant technique that has been around for a lot longer than people think and probably could be dated back further than historians could track. It’s amazing how simple a concept could be, but at the same time how much of an advantage it can have over ones enemies. These methods were extremely popular in both WWI and WWII and may have even helped win battles. It amazes me to see that this techniques are still be used today because they date back so far in our history, but new technologies and advancement have begun make physical steganography a technique of the past, with digital steganography becoming a powerful and common tool. I think that the future will only bring greater advancements in steganography and make it almost undetectable and undecipherable.