Search icon CANCEL
Subscription
0
Cart icon
Your Cart (0 item)
Close icon
You have no products in your basket yet
Save more on your purchases now! discount-offer-chevron-icon
Savings automatically calculated. No voucher code required.
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Python for Secret Agents

You're reading from   Python for Secret Agents Analyze, encrypt, and uncover intelligence data using Python, the essential tool for all aspiring secret agents

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Aug 2014
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781783980420
Length 216 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Steven F. Lott Steven F. Lott
Author Profile Icon Steven F. Lott
Steven F. Lott
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Detecting and preventing tampering

We can use steganography to assure that our message isn't tampered with. If we can't find our digital watermark properly encoded, we know that our picture was touched. This is one way to detect tampering. A more robust technique to detect tampering is to use hash totals. There are a number of hash algorithms used to produce a summary or signature of a sequence of bytes. We send both the message and the hash code separately. If the received message doesn't match the hash code, we know something went wrong. One common use case for hashes is to confirm a proper download of a file. After downloading a file, we should compare the hash of the file we got with a separately published hash value; if the hash values don't match, something's wrong with the file. We can delete it before opening it.

While it seems like encryption would prevent tampering, it requires careful management of the encryption keys. Encryption is no panacea. It&apos...

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at $19.99/month. Cancel anytime