The Atlantic

A Trick That Hides Censored Websites Inside Cat Videos

The technique uses popular sites as camouflage for banned ones.
Source: Fjola Dogg Thorvalds / Getty

A pair of researchers behind a system for avoiding internet censorship wants to deliver banned websites inside of cat videos. Their system uses media from popular, innocuous websites the way a high schooler might use the dust jacket of a textbook to hide the fact that he’s reading a comic book in class. To the overseeing authority—in the classroom, the teacher; on the internet, a government censor—the content being consumed appears acceptable, even when it’s illicit.

The researchers, who work at the University of Waterloo’s cryptography lab, named after a race of aliens from who wear the skins of their human victims to blend in. The system uses a technique

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