Week 1: What's Information Hiding?

第一週的課程主題我設定的是讓同學對 Information Hiding 領域有初步的概念。因此, 第一節課說明完課程進行方式後, 我請同學自己上網查看看這們課有沒有合適的教科書可以用, 然後在第二節課進行討論。

第二堂課, 我們用 information hiding 當關鍵字, 從 Google 搜尋 到 Fabien A. P. Petitcolas 的網頁中提到 The first book on information hiding techniques..., 因此, 我們就從這個網頁為起點, 開始探討什麼是 Information Hiding ?

在查詢的過程中, 我發現 Google 也提供了網頁翻譯的服務, 因此我們也嘗試讓 Google 直接翻譯網頁, 然後再對照下列原文, 並解釋真正的意涵給同學聽。

Until recently, information hiding techniques received very much less attention from the research community and from industry than cryptography. This situation is, however, changing rapidly and the first academic conference on this topic was organized in 1996. The main driving force is concern over protecting copyright; as audio, video and other works become available in digital form, the ease with which perfect copies can be made may lead to large-scale unauthorized copying, and this is of great concern to the music, film, book and software publishing industries. At the same time, moves by various governments to restrict the availability of encryption services have motivated people to study methods by which private messages can be embedded in seemingly innocuous cover messages.

同學必須體認要學習新科技、新技術, 就一定要讓自己習慣閱讀原文, 剛開始起頭一定很痛苦, 但只要堅持下去, 痛苦就會慢慢舒緩, 甚至消失！

從上述的文章中, 我們延伸討論到的專有名詞如下:
1. cryptography & encryption
2. copyright protection
3. digital form
4. perfect copy
5. embedding
6. innocuous cover message
7. steganography

除此, 我們還聊到預計 3 月 9 日在台灣上映的 "300壯士: 斯巴達的逆襲" 電影, 就是歷史上記載最早使用隱藏技術來傳遞訊息的史實。