More Examples of Organized Crime and Steganography
Drug Trafficking:
In March 2008, Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, a Colombian drug lord was caught relaying messages embedded in hundreds of Hello Kitty images. Abadia, who controls the Valle del Norte cartel, has earned an estimated $1.8 billion from drug trafficking along the Pacific coast of Mexico and California. He is being held by Brazilian authorities on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, and murder but may be extradited to the US under an agreement with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Brazilian police did not have the necessary computers and technical expertise to extract the hidden data, but the DEA was able to decode the files in exchange for his prosecution in the US. The images contained audio recordings of Abadia, photographs of transit routes, and instructions on cocaine shipments.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ieuIvbrvmfofmOt8o0YfXzbysVuQ
Corporate Espionage and Intellectual Property Theft:
In June 2000, Electronic Evidence Discovery Inc., a Seattle-based forensics consulting firm, led an investigation of insider corporate espionage at an undisclosed engineering company. Most insider corporate espionage cases go unreported or are handled internally because of the damage it could cause to a company’s image and stock price. However there have been many anonymous or undisclosed examples in recent years of employees stealing intellectual property by embedding the information in another, innocuous file.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/71726/Steganography_Hidden_Data