Understanding Steganography Technologies

Steganography is the process of hiding data in other types of data such as images or text files. The most popular method of hiding data in files is to utilize graphic images as hiding places. Attackers can embed any information in a graphic file using steganography.

The hacker can hide directions on making a bomb a secret bank account number, or answers to a test. Any text imaginable can be hidden in an image. In Exercise you will use Image Hide to hide text within an image.

To hide data in an image using ImageHide:

• Download and install the ImageHide program Download Here Image File.
• Add an image in the Image Hide program.
• Add text in the field at the bottom of the ImageHide screen
• Hide the text within the image using ImageHide.

It is the art of hiding data or message in another file invisible to a targeted mass of people. Mostly people have a wrong concept that steganography is related to images only i.e. hiding messages in images only but actually that is not the case it can be done in other file formats also.We can also hide .RAR file in .DOCX formats etc.

Here is a Noob Friendly tutorial on Steganography that explains how to hide exe within the Jpeg

• Save the picture of choice to your desktop.
• Make a new .rar or .zip folder on your desktop.
• Add the files you want to hide into the .zip or .rar.
• Click start menu, run, cmd.
• In Command Prompt type cd "desktop" with the quotation marks..
• Now type in
• copy /b picturename.jpg + foldername.rar outputfilename.jpg
• If you use .zip then: copy /b picturename.jpg + foldername.zip outputfilename.jpg
• Now there should be the outputed file name with a .jpg extension on the desktop.
  (Do not close Command Prompt just yet)
• Double click it to open the picture and check it out.
• When your done looking and want to view the hidden files.
• Type: ren outputfilename.jpg outputfilename.rar or zip on command Prompt

How to Hide File Inside an Image.

Password guessing is hard work. Why not just sniff credentials off the wire as users log in to a server and then replay them to gain access?

Before begin I have one secret file named : workers-salary.pdf I do not want other people know about this file and also a picture named : apple.jpg. All of that files I put on my personal folder named pictures.

• Open your command prompt
• Go to your pictures folder (see the tutorial how to navigate using command prompt
• Compress your secret file (workers-salary.pdf) using WinRar, 7Zip, etc
• Now in your picture folder you already have new file named : workers-salary.rar.
• Next step we will use the command prompt to join this two file.
• copy /b [the_image] + [rar_file_to_hide] [image_result_name]
• e.g : copy /b apple.jpg + workers-salary.rar v4l.jpg
• Oops I am forgot to describe how to view the content.Actually theres two steps you can do to view the content.
• change the file extension from v4l.jpg to v4l.rar and just open using your WinRar application and your file is there.
• Right click v4l.jpg and choose open with WinRar and your secret file is there.
• Hope its useful !!

Top 7 Steganography Tools:

1. Xiao Steganography

Xiao Steganography is developed by Nakasoft and can be used to perform steganography for bump and wav files. The tools are available for windows platform and are extremely simple to use with 3 easy steps that will be discussed below.

Step 1: Select the target file (Image and wav file only supported).

Step 2: Select the file that has to be added to the target file (can be any file: choose a text file for testing).

The tool offers RC2, RC$, DES, Triple DES, Triple DES 12 encryption along with a few hashing options. Triple DES can be used to provide a stronger encryption along with MD5 hash. The file can be password protected and all these combined provides a strong steganography as well as crypto options.

Step 3: Choose encryption, hashing, and password for target file and click finish. You are asked to save the file and done.

Download Here..

2. MP3Stego.

Which hides text files within larger text files, and lastly a tool that hides files in MP3s called MP3 Stego.

Download Here..

3. Image Steganography

Image Steganography tool is another free tool to perform robust Steganography using images. Input the image file and the private text you want to include into Image Steganography. Encrypt it using the software, it results in the image output. Provide the same output file to image steganography and decrypt it. The private text will be extracted from the image file using the same software.

Download Here..

4. Crypture

Crypture uses command line interface to perform Steganography. Using Crypture, you can hide your sensitive data using BMP images files. But there is one requirement for this Steganography to happen.The Image file should be 8 times larger than the data file, which you want to encrypt.Crypture is only 6KB in size and it does not need any installation.

Download Here..

5. Snow

Snow exploits the steganographic nature of whitespace.Locating trailing whitespace in text is like finding a polar bear in a snowstorm. And it uses the ICE encryption algorithm, so the name is thematically consistent.

Download Here..

6. Steghide

Source code is aviailable and several ports are available for different operating systems. IMAGES: (BMP) AUDIO: (WAV, AU )

Download Here..

7. Hide N Send

This is a small and extremely simple tool that can be used to hide files in image files. Just run the utility and select the files, select the encryption,concealment and hashing algorithms and click hide. The tool has just two tabs for hiding and extraction.

Download Here..

I hope you enjoyed this article.