Onion's Quickie Contest.

onion2k

I have a small, but interesting (I believe) puzzle.

Theres a secret message hidden in the following picture. It includes a password. What is that password?

I'll be following this thread, and will offer a clue every now and again should people appear to get stumped.

PS. The cat is my pet, Purrkins. Photo by me.

Moonglobe

Purrkins.

my password's been my cat's name before, it's a valid guess.:bemused:

LordShryku

Some steganography involved?

Mordecai

Anyone seen Along Came a Spider?...

drag0n

enigma wrapped in a hidden burrito.
anything involved with gd or imagemagik or is it plain sight deal?

Weedpacket

Originally posted by LordShryku
Some steganography involved?

Reasonable guess, seeing as it's a PNG. Check out the histogram, too.

vaaaska

Hmmm, I was checking the color channels but I can't see anything. Inverting the image to and fro as well to see if anything appears (you can catch irregularities in inverted images often times).

Ack, I need to be working...v

onion2k

Originally posted by LordShryku
Some steganography involved?

That would be a fair guess.

piersk

Originally posted by Mordecai
Anyone seen Along Came a Spider?...

Yes. Excellent film. However, I don't see what that has to do with this? 😕

drawmack

stegonography is almost impossible to crack.

First, you have to know what program was used to store the data - so you know the method (low bit, high bit, mid bit, empty bit, ...)

Second if you don't know the password you're probably not going to guess it.

Thirdly you need the original and the stego pictures to work on it.

From along came a spider - "You don't crack stego."

Weedpacket

Originally posted by drawmack
From along came a spider - "You don't crack stego."

A bit extreme - it's assuming (among other things) that the hidden data is merely being obscured, not actively encrypted. If it's in clear, then you get patterns in the pixel data you can sink your teeth into. You don't need the original image in that case; the cases where you do are those where the images are effectively being used as one-time pads (and that's images plural: as soon as you use the same image for two messages you've pretty lost your security).

piersk

Originally posted by onion2k
PS. The cat is my pet, Purrkins. Photo by me.

He looks just like my cat 😃

suepahfly

Well, the filename suggests the message you are speaking about is ``3''

So therefor the password = 3

onion2k

Originally posted by drawmack
First, you have to know what program was used to store the data - so you know the method (low bit, high bit, mid bit, empty bit, ...)

Second if you don't know the password you're probably not going to guess it.

Thirdly you need the original and the stego pictures to work on it.

You're thinking too hard. I've not gone all out to make this hard to break.

drag0n

purrkins?

onion2k

Originally posted by drag0n
purrkins?

Thats the name of my cat. Its not the password.

Is anyone actually attempting to solve this? Without guessing I mean...

rgermain

I am, but I am not sure how to go about doing it. Just started to look up stuff on steganography. Any clues on how to go about solving it?

Elizabeth

I've done all I can with it in photoshop... and I still don't have a clue. Then I'm thinking maybe it's the square root of the number of purrkins' whiskers or some such nonsense.

onion2k

Originally posted by rgermain
I am, but I am not sure how to go about doing it. Just started to look up stuff on steganography. Any clues on how to go about solving it?

Think small. And obvious.

Elizabeth

What, does that little black dot on the end of his nose contain a secret formula? 🙂