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THURSDAY, JULY 1, 2010


ASSOCIATED PRESS IMAGES Anna Chapman: From Russia with . . . love her! chapman from C1


her biopic in our minds. Scarlett Johans- son — no wait, Jessica Biel! Someone said that she drank Alma De


Agave tequila and almost immediately the company issued an official statement explaining its role in Chapman’s drink- ing habits: “Russell Terlecki, President of the East Coast Operations . . . met her on the Seastreak going to Atlantic High- lands, NJ. She loved Alma De Agave te- quila.”


She had a Facebook account (and why


not? In America, the best way to fly un- der the radar is to fly over it. Wouldn’t it be much more suspect if she weren’t on Facebook?), which we immediately be- gan obsessing over. Unlucky for us: Much of it was written in Cyrillic. Lucky for us: Chapman’s friend list


was available for public consumption. Apparently, she didn’t understand Face- book’s new privacy controls any better than the rest of us. Phone calls with several of her ac- quaintances reveal a woman with a head for business (and a bod for sin? Is Anna Chapman the Working Girl of 2010?) — a woman who single-mindedly pursued


her goal of combining real estate with Internet technology. “She was very modern, energetic, rea- sonably worldly,” says Dan Johnson, the British founder of a real estate Web site, who met Chapman when she suggested a possible partnership between Johnson’s site and hers, www.domdot.ru, which fo- cused on Russian listings. They corre- sponded for several months and met when Chapman was passing through London. “She was flying around the world, setting up businesses. It’s not someone with a lazy mind-set who’s go- ing to be doing that.” Arthur Welf, a Russian journalist who


first met Chapman in 2008 when they both attended a real estate conference, says that Chapman was looking for fund- ing to develop a New York equivalent of her site and was passionately excited about the project. “I would think she would have no time for other things like espionage,” Welf says. “She was working 24 hours around the clock.” He believes Chapman is innocent. “She’s always brainstorming, always


trying to create new ideas,” says Alena Popova, a Russian businesswoman who met Chapman at the Global Technology Symposium earlier this year in San Fran-


UNDERCOVER? Anna Chapman, one of 11


alleged Russian agents arrested this week, posted photos and personal details on


social-networking sites. “She was very modern, energetic, reasonably worldly,” observes one of her associates.


cisco. Popova was so impressed with Chapman’s poise that later, when they met up in New York, she filmed an inter- view with her, Chapman providing tips for creating successful start-ups. The three-minute video, entirely in


Russian, is now going viral on YouTube, with plenty of salivating fans. “That’s one hot Russian spy,” Assaultman45 offers in the comments section. “Her punishment should be a date with me.” It’s so much easier when “From Russia


With Love” is a total babe. It’s all so Na- tasha, so Ninotchka, so Cold War retro. The things that Chapman has been ac- cused of doing — exchanging covert in- formation with a Russian government of- ficial — seem downright quaint when you read the Justice Department’s de-


scription of the activities. There were code phrases — Haven’t we met in Cali- fornia last summer? — and there were weekly Wednesday check-ins at a coffee shop. In the Red Scare 1950s, this would have been terrifying, but it sure beats a shoe bomber today. Maybe this is why we’ve been treating


Chapman more like she’s June’s Play- mate and less like she’s a threat to na- tional security — desperately seeking out her likes and dislikes, her hopes and dreams, as if we plan to take her for a ro- mantic walk on the beach. International news sites have also got- ten in on the action: A profile on the Rus- sian site LifeNews.ru claims that Chap- man is the daughter of the former Rus- sian ambassador to Kenya, that she was raised by her grandmother, that she stud- ied economics at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia and once worked in banking. In a second video interview, shot at


New York Entrepreneur Week, Chapman speaks in English to an unseen inter- viewer, describing how she loves running her own Web site. Her voice is husky, her mannerisms both confident and girlish. “She’s very charming, attractive, very smart,” says David Hantman, who works


in New York real estate appraising and was introduced to Chapman through mutual friends. “I was surprised at how young she was to be in a position to nego- tiate with these big companies” that she said she was dealing with. “She had so much business acumen for someone so young.”


Any other details you can release, Da- vid? Some other illusory detail for us to salivate over? Perhaps something per- sonal? “She’s very social,” Hantman says thoughtfully. “She enjoyed having her nails done.” The alleged spy loved manicures! But throughout Wednesday, Chap-


man’s Facebook friend list decreased, 168 in the morning, 161 in the afternoon, as her acquaintances presumably began to question whether they wanted to be affil- iated with her, and how much they really knew about her to begin with. “She’s such a sweet person, I’d hate to


see anything happen to her,” Hantman says. “But if she’s a spy, that’s very dis- turbing.”


hessem@washpost.com


Staff writer Kevin Sieff contributed to this report.


Spy case highlights the long-obscure practice of steganography steganography from C1


w/A to pass him $300K from our experi- enced field station rep (R). Half of it is for you. Another half is to be passed to young colleague (known to you) in fall ’09- winter ’10.... “Place: North White Plains train sta-


tion (Harlem Line), quiet and deserted on weekends. No surveillance cam- eras.... “A and R meet in lower part of stair- case, in dead zone. R hands over and A gets pack w/ money (A’s BN [Barnes and Noble] bag stays in your hands, A hides pack w/ money into his tote).” Pictures used to be worth a thousand words. Now, in the new world of espio- nage, they are a thousand words. The me- dium is the message. And, as the Justice Department’s case unfolds against 11 alleged Russian clan- destine operatives, we all are learning a fancy new word: steganography. It’s the practice of hiding information in otherwise unremarkable objects or media. It’s not to be confused with cryp- tography, the practice of encoding mes- sages to protect them from prying eyes. The art of steganography is to fool the prying eyes into thinking no message is being passed at all.


According to the FBI’s complaint against nine of the defendants, investiga-


tors recovered more than 100 text files that had been embedded in stegano- graphic images and exchanged between the Murphys and their alleged control- lers in the Moscow headquarters of a Russian intelligence agency. Another pair of alleged conspirators, working out of Boston, are said to have communicat- ed the same way with headquarters, as did a third pair, in Seattle. The FBI has not described the pictures


that cloaked the messages, except to say that they “appear wholly unremarkable to the naked eye.” Some of the suspects’ tradecraft reads


like a bad le Carré parody. Analysts are snickering at the furtive handoffs of shopping bags, the invisible ink, the bur- ied loot, the contrived dialogue to verify identities (“Could we have met in Malta?” “Yes, indeed, I was in La Valetta”). But the extensive use of steganography


is drawing more respectful notice. “The steganography, that’s pretty hot


stuff,” says Peter Earnest, executive direc- tor of the International Spy Museum and a veteran of the CIA’s clandestine service. Members of the rather small and ob-


scure steganographic community are rel- ishing the sudden attention to their over- looked discipline.


“I told someone I was going to write a paper on steganography, and he said, ‘Now does steganography refer to the di-


nosaur or the thing that hangs down in a cave?’ ” says Gary C. Kessler, a computer forensics consultant based in Burlington, Vt.


Steganography has been a suspected technique of child pornographers and terrorists. After the Sept. 11, 2001, at- tacks, investigators probed whether al Qaeda dabbled in steganography. But this is one of the first high-profile pros- ecutions in which federal investigators have alleged the use of steganography to pass secret messages, according to stega- nography experts. “From what’s been disclosed, this is


pretty much the way you would use ste- ganography,” says Chet Hosmer, chief sci- entist at WetStone Technologies in Con- way, S.C., which develops tools to combat cyber-crime. “You have potentially thou- sands of people going to a Web site and looking at a picture. You have no idea who put it up, and no idea who of the


Steganography has been a suspected technique of child pornographers and terrorists.


thousands of people looking at it are re- ceiving the message.” Steganography is like beaming a bat signal into the sky that only a person with special glasses can see. It’s like a digital dead drop. In the old days, to transfer a packet of data to an agent, a handler would leave it hidden somewhere. “It’s the same thing done at the speed of the Internet, and your physical loca- tion can be anywhere on the planet, from which you can pick it up anytime,” Hosm- er says.


Steganography has been around for centuries. One of the first examples cited by spy scholars came during a war be- tween the Persians and the Spartans in the fifth century B.C. A Spartan partisan who was exiled in Persia carved a mes- sage warning of an invasion in the wood- en bowl of a wax tablet. He covered the wood with fresh melted wax and had the tablet sent to the Spartans, without the Persians knowing the innocuous object carried a message. Another steganographic legend from ancient times features a prince who shaves the head of a servant, tattoos a message on the servant’s head and, once the hair has grown back, sends the ser- vant to deliver the message to another prince. Opportunities evolved with technol- ogy. The tiny, almost invisible, microdots


Stepmom’s generosity makes mom uncomfortable ASK AMY


Dear Amy: My former husband is engaged to


marry a very nice and generous woman who is 15 years my junior and has two grade school-age children. My children are 20 and 17. Since the early days of the


relationship, she has worked hard to establish friendships with my children and has bestowed many gifts, sometimes spending more on them than I am able to afford.


She has been especially generous with


my 20-year-old daughter (offering pedicures, shopping, yoga, etc.). This summer she has been using her many work connections to arrange valuable internship and job opportunities for my children. I am glad for them, but feeling


increasingly uncomfortable at what seems to me to be some intrusiveness on her part, or stepping over boundaries. I would like to have an amicable


relationship with her someday, but this is making it hard for me.


Am I being unreasonable? Should I say something to my ex-husband — or to her? If it’s best to continue biting my tongue, do you have any advice for how I can cope with this situation and learn to accept it? I would be interested in how other


divorced mothers deal with this situation. Newly Single Mom


You are your kids’ mom. They know


this. Your secure relationship with them allows them to let others safely into their lives. Let this lie. You want your kids to


enjoy a healthy relationship with the woman who will become their stepmother. Unless you feel she is trying to submarine you, interfere with or subvert your relationship with your kids, let them enjoy a relationship with someone who seems to be trying hard to be a positive force in their lives. I know this stings, but unless you see


a negative impact on your children, you should continue to bite your tongue.


Dear Amy: Here’s a real-life story about a friend whose young bachelor son moved back home after leaving a job.


My friend bought a hot tub and had it


installed on the deck, next to the room where her son was staying. Then she announced to her son that she was going


hot-tubbing in the nude. Her son moved out immediately, found


a new job and is now happily married. Maybe this idea will help other parents. Amused in Oregon


All over America, moms are calling the hot-tub installers.


Dear Amy: My husband and I both laughed out


loud after separately reading the letter from “Annoyed” and the advice you gave on dealing with tedious/abrasive in-laws on vacation. You see, long ago when we attempted


to vacation with my husband’s family in Maine, that is exactly what I would do: go off in a corner and read an interesting book.


Their reaction was to tell my husband


that I was a snobbish, antisocial pill. Needless to say, we no longer bother speaking to that part of the family. Life is too short. There are plenty of wonderful people in the world to spend time with, family or not.


Moved On


As vacation season heats up, those people planning to vacation with toxic relatives might want to pack an extra book.


Write to Amy Dickinson at askamy@tribune. com or Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.


© 2010 by the Chicago Tribune Distributed by Tribune Media Services


of secret film affixed to otherwise bland documents in the mid-20th-century hey- day of espionage were a form of stega- nography. The Internet and digital technology


have opened vast new possibilities, and it could be inevitable that steganography will become more common. At least 1,000 software programs create and in- terpret steganographic images, Hosmer says. His company makes tools that can analyze a picture and detect anomalies that betray the presence of stegano- graphic tampering. Pictures aren’t the only vehicle for se-


cret information. The data can be em- bedded in, and later retrieved from, digi- tal videos, audio files and even streaming voice communication over the Internet. There are some legitimate uses of ste-


ganography. Presumably, freedom fight- ers in an oppressive regime could com- municate using steganography, Kessler says. But given the potential nefarious uses, Kessler believes the attention the al- leged Russian spy case is drawing to the practice is a good thing. “I urge people who know of its use to talk a little bit more openly about it, be- cause to the bad guys, it’s not a secret, and I think many of the good guys aren’t taking it seriously enough to do some- thing about it,” Kessler says. montgomeryd@washpost.com


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