ColorSpace: A Framework for Developing CryptoStego Systems

CᴏʟᴏʀSᴘᴀᴄᴇ is a framework for developing crypto-steganography systems, ciphers, and document provenance models. As the logical progression of concrete poetry and a form of illumination, it involves moving beyond visible text to hide text in the empty spaces of a document.

What it Does

The spaces in rich-text documents have formatting properties like font colors and text gradients, even though they are invisible to the reader. CᴏʟᴏʀSᴘᴀᴄᴇ involves translating messages into color values and applying them to the spaces between visible words, leaving the original document visibly unchanged.

I developed the Calico and Coalescence models in VBA as proofs-of-concept that enable users to compress and hide up to 117 characters inside a single invisible space.

Companion Source Code

The implementation source files (ActivateColorSpace.bas, ColorSpaceVBAterminal.frm, and ColorSpaceVBAterminal.frx) are hosted on GitHub:

• Repository: https://github.com/ChronicRhyno/ColorSpace

Required Attribution & Usage Policy

Any public software or derivative work relying on this framework must include one of the following notices in its documentation or README:

• Plain Text: Built using ColorSpace v1.0 by ChronicRhyno.

• Unicode: Built using CᴏʟᴏʀSᴘᴀᴄᴇ v1.0 by CʜʀᴏɴɪᴄRʜʏɴᴏ.

Note: You may reference the name to truthfully state compatibility or derivation, but you may not use the brand name or username in a manner that implies official endorsement or sponsorship.

Licensing Notice

• Whitepaper (ColorSpace.pdf): Distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND).

• Companion Source Code (GitHub): Distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0).