Revolutionary War Soldiers During the revolutionary war, many soldiers were unpaid volunteers who wore whatever clothing they happenned to have, and used whatever weapons they could come up with. This ragtag, ill-equipped, poorly supported army of citizens was considered hardly worth the effort by the well-dressed, well disciplined English soldiers, the Red-Coats. However, the guerilla tactics employed by the shabby frontiersmen soon changed the minds of the severely regimented Royals.

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Just a Sample Page that could actually contain anything.

You can't tell by looking or scanning, but the picture really contains an encrypted text file, and can be read by ANYONE having the proper decryption program, in this case, S-Tools. This process is known as steganography, and relies on the fact that digitally encrypted text can be hidden in a picture or sound file without hurting the appearance or impairing the sound of the original (MUCH). Furthermore,
  1. You must know that there is something there to start with.
  2. You have to have the right decryption program.
  3. You have to know the proper pass-phrase.
  4. You have to know the proper encryption algorithm.

In this case, I am using an encryption method as follows:
The TITLE of the page itself contains the instructions for deriving the pass-phrase and algorithm.
By pre-arrangement with my target audience, the length of the first word tells which character of the text words to use. The length of the second word in the title tells how many characters are used in the pass-phrase, and the length of the third word tells which algorithm was used.

So, with this page, use the 3rd character of the first 5 words in the text as the pass-phrase, and the 3rd algorithm.

If you want to use this system for real, choose your own method for providing the key to your intended audience. Maybe you could EMAIL them a message saying something like:
"Hey Paul, check out this neat page at http://www.oocities.org/TelevisionCity/5548/steganography.html"
Be careful - case matters to S-Tools. Make one mistake, and S-Tools won't reveal anything.
One nice thing about S-Tools is that it lets you make copies of the files involved with the save as function, and doesn't change the original file unless you use the save function.

Now the fun part:

You know there is a message in this picture, so decode it:
  1. Figure out the encryption key.
  2. Copy the picture to your system.
  3. Drag it into S-Tools window.
  4. Right-Click on it and choose reveal to decrypt the text file.
  5. Enter the encryption key and recover the file.
  6. Save the archived text file to your system and read the message.
With S-tools you can use a BMP or non-animated GIF picture, or a WAV sound file to hide your data, so the possibilities are endless.

If this process intrigues you, then download
the installer for S-Tools here, and go for it.....
Who knows how many secret messages are sitting innocuously on the internet right now, just waiting for someone with the proper information to read them, and possibly act on them....