Introducing the NSA-Proof Font

Motherboard beta blog ^ | June 23, 2013 | Brian Merchant

[Hardraade]

This solves nothing.

Moscow rules.

[Bon mots]

This is not sophisticated, but will give you an idea how to really hide a message if you want to.

My message is in bold:

You should not fear your benevolent government, who
can use a variety of means to protect you. Bad people can
easily use our communications systems for bad purposes and can
hide their bad intent in encrypted messages or
a simple email. The government has the technology to find this
message and stop these nasty people from harming us,
if they didn't, then two stupid boys from Chechnya might hurt
you. So don't fear the government, they only
want to help you. So, there are ways to hide a message if you want
to.

Do you see it?
You can easily hide a message if you want to.

[rfp1234]

Good idea; reminds me of one of the rare positives in Arnold’s
stint as governor.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/schwarzenegger/

[Redcloak]

It won't work. Email is sent as ASCII character codes; not as images of letters. When you see a particular font, that's because there's HTML formatting included in the email. But the underlying message is still quite readable to a machine. To make a font like this work, you would have to send the message as an image file; difficult, but not impossible to read.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Why not just use ROT13, which is just as secure?

[Beckwith]

This is ridiculous.

The NSA has more cryptologists per square foot that any entity in the world. If you invent an entirely new font, they’ll have it countered within the week

And how does this concept affect voice transmissions?

[Lazamataz]

Immediately, the NSA would simply adapt their readers to accomodate this changed font.

[Lazamataz]

Why not just use ROT13, which is just as secure?

EBG13 vf hggreyl vzcrargenoyr. V hfr vg gb uvqr nyy zl frafvgvir qngn.

[Lazamataz]

The NSA has more cryptologists per square foot that any entity in the world. If you invent an entirely new font, they’ll have it countered within the week three minutes.

Corrected it for you.

And how does this concept affect voice transmissions?

Simple. Speak in 'font'.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Baffling! You could also use MicroSoft Office encryption, which supports AES128 and AES256, which are approved by NSA for SECRET and TOP SECRET information, respectively.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Eak-spay in-ay ig-pay atin-lay. It’s-ay unbreakable-ay.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Before LPC-10 and digitized voice, the Army used to distribute little (like 3” x 2”) code books with substitutes for common words used in voice transmissions, with cipher substitutes for alphanumerics for the words not in the small book. Common words had several alternate cipher words (as did alpha numerics). They would distribute training editions, with clever substitutions, like “First Sergeant” being enciphered as “SOB”. That kind of thing. The REMFs at Fort Meade must have thought that that was hilarious.

[garyb]

uh, if the nsa approved it, they have the key for it.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

That seems not to be true. The NSA approved it for use by the US Government. It was developed by IBM with input from NSA. Originally, NSA’s contribution was undisclosed, but former IBMer’s who moved on to academia have disclosed the details of NSA’s contributions, which were actually to remove certain cryptological weakness. AES is stronger because of NSA. And, as I said, NSA approved it for U.S. Government, including military, communications. There is no way they would do this if they were aware of cyptological flaws.

[Bartholomew Roberts]

From now on, every email and posting I write will have a corresponding block of gibberish. It will be meaningless (or will it?)

Dnfnx difficult figs. Ddsws dddszsss woznf dj fm djcmfn aids wwwaq nymgmd yijgg jjjtcs tv huff ggcffcv ddddank iigggv jiggling dndjrjdn s djdjd

[Max in Utah]

What if you took a screen shot of a text document that contained your message, then attached it to your email... would that be unreadable for their usual scanning procedure?

(I’m aware of Optical Character Resolution)

[Lazamataz]

Two of your words were sent in the clear.

Difficult figs.

[Lazamataz]

Eak-spay in-ay ig-pay atin-lay. It’s-ay unbreakable-ay.

What?

Well, on the off-chance you are talking about codes and codebreaking, I have found that if you simply use Google Translate, and translate your text into another language, that the NSA cannot break it.

You want proof? Well, most of my secret text is about my kitties, and the NSA never once have contacted me.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Difficult figs.

And that's clearly a slanderous attack on the character and intellect of US Senators McCain and Graham - right out in the open. Arrest that man! :)