Suppose you would like to exchange a set of messages with another person, but you would like to prevent any third party from realizing that a message has been transmitted.
Now suppose that you and the other person are frequently exchanging some type of regularly formatted data, or could reasonably start to exchange data like that. This would be an ideal situation for the use of plain_sight. You would create a custom rule file that produces files that look like the commonly exchanged data but actually contain encrypted messages. For the purposes of this tutorial, let’s presume that the two parties frequently exchange server login logs.
To begin, both parties should meet and get on the same page. Both parties must have the following:
- Some kind of plain_sight terminal.
- The same rule file.
- The same encryption key or password.
The easiest to use plain_sight terminal is an html file available for download here: plainSight.html
The rule file which we will use in this tutorial is available here: loginLog
The password can be any combination of printable ASCII characters of any length. A single letter can be used or the full text of War and Peace. I recommend using either 10+ characters of mixed special characters, capital letters, numbers, and lowercase letters or a set of 5+ dictionary words and/or proper names strung together or in sentence form. So good passwords would be either something like “s4^hw!Q#334|{}jdE4$” or “Jon says this password is easier to remember.” For the purposes of this tutorial we will use the password, “The jabberwocky invented the slushy hail mary.”
Now suppose that you want to send the following message:
Sound Check. Testing. Testing. 1,2,3. Sippowitz. Syllabus. Clown. Callow.
Callous. Google. Go Ogle. Google.
The first step would be to open plainsight.html in your favorite browser. It should look like this.
Here you can see that there are directions right at the top of the page for reference. In accordance with step 1, the message you want to mask should be pasted into the “Text to Process” box as so:
Next you need to open the previously downloaded rule file “loginLog.” Just click on the “Browse” button located immediately below the “Rule File:” label. Then navigate to where the file is on your computer, highlight it, and select “open.”
After hitting “open” the browser should look like this:
Next, you want to make sure to encrypt the file, so check the “Encrypt?” check box which will enable the password box. Select the password box and type in “The jabberwocky invented the slushy hail mary.”
Finally, hit the “HIDE” button and the output box will be automatically filled in with the masked and encrypted message.
Now you can select the masked message and copy and paste it into a file, email, paste bin, forum, or chat for transmission to the other party.
Once the other party has the concealed message, they just need to open up plainSight.html in their browser and repeat the same steps except that the masked message goes into the “Text to Process” box, and the “UNHIDE” button should be hit after opening the rule file and entering the password. When they do, the original message will appear in the output box.
And then the message will have been received.
