Computer scientists invent a way to embed hidden info in ordinary text

A newly invented text steganographic (“hidden writing”) method can conceal information in seemingly plain text. The method is called FontCode, and it works by making minute alterations to the shapes of fonts in text to form an encoded message, an article in Science Daily states. Many earlier text and document methods are limited to certain types of documents. But FontCode works with most documents as well as the majority of fonts. The hidden message will remain unchanged even after the document is printed out or saved as another file type. A team of computer researchers from Columbia University (CU) came up with the new text steganographic method. They were overseen by Changxi Zheng, who also served as the senior author of the recently published paper. FontCode can hide texts, metadata, and digital signatures in a text document or an image. It works for both digital documents and physical printouts. It is also compatible with most font families, word processing programs, and image-editing and drawing programs. Every letter in a text can contain a perturbation. That means the only restriction on the encoded data is the amount of regular text in the carrier document. (Read more)

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