Heiser-The-Facade - Sparkling Eyes

"After supper this evening. Kevin gave me mine, and the instructions were thesame.""Interesting. I'd assume the disks have identical contents then, wouldn't you?""Only one way to find out," Brian answered, hitting a few keystrokes. "I workedon mine right after I got back to the room. It had a short letter on it and a program that Ithink you'll find interesting. Do you have yours with you?""Yes, I do. It's one of the reasons I decided to visit. I was hoping you could showme what to do with it.""Let's have a look."Father Benedict joined Brian at his desk and drew the disk from his lapel pocket.Brian inserted it into his computer, and searched the drive as the priest watched."Yep, they're identical," he said after a few seconds."Are you sure?""Yeah. It has exactly the same files that mine had.""What are they?""Here's the note," he replied, tabbing to his word processor. He withdrew the diskand returned it to Father Andrew, already gazing intently at the screen. The message readsimply:Enclosed is an encryption program for deciphering the 8-bit .GIF files that youwill receive in email this afternoon. They contain information about the misleadingnature of our project. Please be prepared for tomorrow's meeting. Wemust stand together if we are to get at the truth. We will introduce the materialwhen it is our turn to present. Once you have loaded the program and decipheredthe files, delete every-thing from your hard drive and reformat the disk."What's a GIF file?" asked Father Andrew."It's a picture or graphic," Brian answered."Why are they handing out pictures?""The encryption program they gave us allows you to put messages into pictureswithout altering their appearance—kind of like a written subliminal. It also allows you toreceive such messages and decode the message.""Hiding something in plain sight—a classic technique in steganography," FatherAndrew said with a sly smile."Steganography?" Brian asked. "I can tell the term means `covered writing,' but Iget the impression there's more to it than that.""You're correct on both counts. It's a clandestine communication technique thathas a long and colorful history. One of my favorite examples is the fairly ancient practiceof shaving a messenger's head, then writing something on his scalp. During the typicallylong journey to their destination, the hair would grow back enough to conceal the writingin case they were captured or killed. When they reached the intended recipient, theirheads were shaved again so the message could be read.""Boy, that was clever!" Brian noted in admiration."I served as a cryptographer during World War II, actually. We used somethingcalled the microdot to hide important secret messages. The message was photographicallyreduced to the size of a period, and was inserted as the dot for the letter `i' or the dots in80