Review of Hiding in Plain Sight: Steganography and the Art of Covert Communication (Paperback)

The information is quite good, though not very in depth. The examples are good, as they explain, "See, this really *can* be used in 'real life'." There is also some programming information, so for some parts (nothing critical, just program design), a knowledge of C is useful. Personally, this is my first book on steganography, so the technicality of the information was at a good level (informative, but not buried in jargon or advanced math). I have no programming background, but skipping the program designs was not a detriment in any way.

However... I think the editor should be bludgeoned once or twice with something heavy. I have written some documentation, and the editor did things that I know never to do. First, there are a few grammatical errors, which cause serious problems if you are not paying attention. (In one example, it is said the user (I don't have the book in front of me) "attaches her private PGP key, encrypts it with [the other's] public PGP key, and sends the email". This is after saying many times "NEVER EVER SHARE YOUR PRIVATE PGP KEY!!!". Then, the example goes on to say the recipient "uses the public PGP key, which is attached...". (The first sentence should have read "public PGP key"). In addition to one or two other situations like this, there is also an issue with the inline images. They all appear only at the top and bottom of the page, while the author clearly intends for some to be in paragraphs. The author says things like "as seen in this image:", but the sentence continues, and "this image", the number of which is not given, is elsewhere on the page. Further, many images have the eight resize anchor points and thick border visible from screen shots; these should have been Photoshop'ed out (it's not that hard, I've done it with Paintbrush).

If you are looking for advanced work, skip this. For a basic work, I would give it five stars, but the editors errors are so bad....



Click Here to see more reviews about: Hiding in Plain Sight: Steganography and the Art of Covert Communication (Paperback)