[_nalply]

Yeah.

I remember reading somewhere text steganography being used not to encode a hidden message but to identify recipients who might leak the text. One way is to introduce small mistakes or differences like "were were" but differently for each recipient. One might get "were were" and someone else might get "the the", a third one might get a superfluous comma, etc., even harmless differences which are not mistakes are possible. One possible difference corresponds to a bit of information. If you have one hundred possible differences, you have one hundred bit of identificating information.

But I am sure that it is possible to work around this. Just don't give the exact memo text to the public. Paraphrase the text. I am afraid copy-edit or some intentional changes won't be enough if you don't paraphrase the text.

Dangerous and prone to mistakes but surely lucrative or satisfying for the leaker.

[knotAUsername]

Too dangerous. What if every department gets a different phrase?

Those people would probably do something like innocuously forward it to other departments. Reply to your version of the memo, but respond to the entire design and sales teams. Something like "What a great memo by Tim Cook!"

[_nalply]

Yeah.

I could imagine that steganography is only one part of the puzzle who is the impostor.

Perhaps Apple has a secret departement dedicated to identify leakers. If they found someone they strongly suspect they lay out a trap, for example by only sending him confidential information.

And, if someone innocuously forwards a memo, they have the electronic paper trail of that.

Spionage, counter-spionage and counter-counter-spionage. Apple is waging a war.

[knotAUsername]

iSpionage