Protecting Information with Subcodstanography

In modern communication systems, one of the most challenging tasks involves the implementation of adequate methods for successful and secure transfer of confidential digital information over an unsecured communication channel. Many encryption algorithms have been developed for protection of confidential information. However, over time, flaws have been discovered even with the most sophisticated encryption algorithms. Each encryption algorithm can be decrypted within sufficient time and with sufficient resources. The possibility of decryption has increased with the development of computer technology since available computer speeds enable the decryption process based on the exhaustive data search. This has led to the development of steganography, a science which attempts to hide the very existence of confidential information. However, the stenography also has its disadvantages, listed in the paper. Hence, a new method which combines the favourable properties of cryptography based on substitution encryption and stenography is analysed in the paper. The ability of hiding the existence of confidential information comes from steganography and its encryption using a coding table makes its content undecipherable. This synergy greatly improves protection of confidential information

Automatic Acquisition and Sustainable Use of Political-Ecological Data

The sustainable management of anthropogenically-impacted ecosystems will require ongoing monitoring and advocacy by people across the globe. To this end, automatic methods are developed herein for acquiring several types of such political-ecological data. On the political side, a method is developed for gathering news articles about human actions that affect the ecosystem along with a method for identifying themes in social media that concern the consumption of an ecosystem’s products. On the ecosystem side, a method is derived for estimating wildlife abundance from purchasable high-resolution satellite images. A simple website architecture is described for holding this data and enabling its use in developing sustainable conservation policies. A rhino conservation website illustrates this architecture. A fundamental contradiction between the desire for open data on the locations of endangered flora and fauna versus the need to hide these locations from poachers is addressed through a new security protocol that enables the secure distribution of sensitive ecosystem data to trusted data consumers