Raf Progress 20-26th Jan 2014

Objectives (what did you planned to do?):
1. Collect research papers to revise Literature Review part
2. Adding function to App : able to select photo from the gallery and send photo to another phone via the same App

Efforts done (what did you do?):
1. Some papers were collected and printed. Started reading through. No writing/revising done yet
2. App is able to prompt User to select photo. Sending function is not yet implemented.

Outcomes (success, errors, discussion, screenshots...etc)
1. Requires more related research papers.
2. App is able to prompt User to select photo but the sending part hasn't been implemented. Link to apk : Link

Objective for next week:
1. Writing/Revising for the 2nd draft of Literature Review.
2. Begin writing the introduction part of the thesis
3. App should be able to send photo to another phone via the same App
4. Write Steganography encoding using libpng (http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/581298/PNG-Image-Steganography-with-libpng)

Understanding Convenient and Secured modes

I had some misunderstanding on how the convenient mode works. I first thought that it needs some sort of security on the App as well. So, what I have in mind was...User needs to do the graphical login before "passcode" (key) is automatically sent to the Rpi.

I was mistaken. The key to convenient is that the User should not need to do anything at all, other than just launching the App.

The diagram below should explain it better:

Convenient and Secured Mode

Link for a better view : Link

Qr code testing

On KJ

I told Aliffah that there are two ministers that I believe are capable of bringing our nation forward as our former PM Tun Dr Mahathir did. They are his son, Mukriz and this guy, KJ.

Personally, I don't like him, but among the crop of ministers that we have now, he is the one that is most capable of leading the country, perhaps, in the future. Here is why: excerpts of a BH interview.

Khairy: Some BN leaders 'syok sendiri' online 

Umno Youth chief Khairy Jamaluddin has lamented that BN's social media strategy has been ineffective as some BN leaders had the tendency to be ‘syok sendiri’ (self-indulgent) in their online engagement. "I see many BN leaders - forgive me for saying this - even though they are active on social media, they only speak to their followers, not to outsiders or independents.

"They think that their own sentiment is the national sentiment. That is wrong. "That proves that our social media strategy has been ineffective. (BN leaders) speak to their own people and 'syok sendiri' while the opposition try to reach out to the people in general," Khairy was quoted as saying in a Berita Harian interview today.

He also acknowledged that attacks against the families of politicians on social media were unavoidable. "As a politician, I advise my family to live moderately. When we are chosen as a politician, a minister or the likes, our families have to play their role. "If we want to live freely, then do not be a politician," he was quoted as saying.

Khairy said in the interview that the rakyat's anger over the price hikes is real and urged leaders not to make statements that will hurt the rakyat's feelings. He added that the government should heed former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad's (right) advice that it should cut more costs instead of increasing prices.
When asked whether the government's current cost-cutting measures were enough, he said more was to come and volunteered to have his own pay docked.

Steganography

I'm currently working on my final year project (I just did my first part's presentation this morning, which was terrible, in a way) which involves a technique called "Steganography" or Stego, for short.

The purpose of Stego is similar to Cryptology, in a way that it is used to protect the valuable data from unauthorized access. However, there is a huge difference between the two. Encryption techniques apply specific algorithms to the valuable data (plaintext) to produce encrypted data (ciphertext).

On contrary, Stego focuses on hiding the valuable data (hidden message) within another non valuable data (cover). It's about "hiding the data in a plain sight". In most usage, Stego technique is designed so that the non authorized user does not even realize the hidden message even exists at the first place.

There are various type of medium use for cover. Most notably is image. But lets start with some text files example first.

Lets say, I want to save my password for 2 different websites that I have registered to. I create a text file, naming it visited_countries.txt suggesting to everyone that this file lists all the countries that I have visited. In the files, I have these following content:
        indonessia japan korea usa france nigeria bangladesh india china

 The passwords that I stored in the file were ijkufnbic and naosrianh.

Anyone else who opens the file realizes that the file is merely listing the countries and is not of important. But because the fact that I know there is a hidden message[1] and also the algorithm used[2], I am able to get my passwords from this list.

Hidden message, in a plain sight.

p/s: the first and the second characters of each country.

Android App update:

I have fixed the server scripts and simplify the Android App, enables it to successfully connect to the server and send some data. I tested on Ubuntu and Rpi Raspian, and it works fine on both.

Thanks to Zul,  I was also able to add on QR scan function which is now able to :

1. Scan QR code that point to a http URL ended with "png" 
    Other form of links are simply ignored by the App. Only the link that ended with "png" (hence, png image file)  are actually downloaded to the phone.

2. Download the png image file automatically to the gallery
    The download process is done in the background (Android Asynctask). However, the actual image is also displayed on the App so that the user does not need to be prompted to the gallery to view the image.

The png file extension is important as it is the format that the CMS uses (on webcam photo capture during new user registration). Hence, it will be the format that the Steganography Algorithm will be applied on. The difference between JPEG, GIF and PNG are discussed here : Link.

Here is the App APK file: Link