How to Hide Data in Image, Audio and Video Files: Steganography

Ever questioned to know a way to cover secret facts in image, audio and video files? Well, on this publish I will take you through a idea referred to as steganography using which, it is feasible to hide your mystery statistics in photograph files, songs or another document of your choice. At the give up of this publish, you could additionally down load free stegnographic gear and start hiding your information.

What is Steganography?

Steganography is a way of obscuring facts wherein secret messages are hidden inside laptop documents such as images, sound files, motion pictures and even executable documents in order that, no person besides the sender and the receiver will suspect the lifestyles of stealth statistics in it. Steganography may additionally involve the use of cryptography wherein the message is first encrypted before it's miles concealed in another file. Generally, the messages look like some thing else such as an photograph, sound or video in order that the switch of mystery information remains unsuspected.

The important gain of steganography over different techniques which include cryptography is that, it'll no longer arose suspicion even if the documents fall inside the palms of a 3rd party. Unlike cryptographic messages, stegnographic messages will no way entice the eye of a 3rd birthday celebration by using themselves. Thus stegnanography has an top surrender cryptography because it entails both encryption and obscurity.

What are the Applications of Steganography?

Steganography is especially used to difficult to understand private facts/records for the duration of garage or transmission. For example, you could conceal a mystery message in an audio record and send this to another celebration thru email instead of sending the message within the textual format. The receiver on the opposite cease will decrypt the hidden message using the private decryption key. In a worst case state of affairs, although a third birthday party does control to advantage get entry to to the email, all he can locate is the audio document and now not the hidden statistics inner it. Other usage of steganography encompass digital watermarking of pix for reasons which include copyright protection.

Even even though steganography has many useful programs, some may additionally use this approach for illegitimate purposes which include hiding a pornographic content in different large files. Rumors about terrorists using steganography for hiding and speaking their secret data and commands also are suggested. An article claiming that, al-Queda had used steganography to encode messages in photos and transported them thru e-mails, became pronounced via New York Times, in October 2001.

How do Steganography Tools Work?

Stegnography equipment put in force smart algorithms to carefully embed the encrypted textual content messages or facts interior other large documents consisting of an image, audio, video or an executable report. Some equipment will embed the encrypted information on the stop of another record in order that there could be sufficient room for storing large statistics.

There are many steganography equipment available on line but only some are capable of paintings perfectly. I did not discover any tool that worked flawlessly on both small and massive facts. However, I even have  controlled to broaden my own device that may work flawlessly on all varieties of documents and all length of records. The tool is called “Stego Magic“. You can download it from the following hyperlink.

Download StegoMagic.zip

The zip file contains two versions of Stego Magic: One for encrypting the text messages and the other for encrypting binary files. StegoMagic_TXT can be used to hide text messages in other files such as an image or a sound file. StegoMagic_BIN can be used to hide one binary file in another such as an executable file inside an image or an image inside a video file.

With Stego Magic, there is no limitation on the size and type of the file that you are intending to hide. For example, you can hide a video of size 1 GB in an image of size 1 MB or hide an executable file inside a WORD document. The tool is pretty straightforward to use and requires no special understanding of the concept.

At the end of the encryption process, a secret decryption key will be generated and the same is required during the decryption process.

How to Use Stego Magic?

Suppose you want to hide a text message inside a JPG file:

1. Place the JPG and the text file (.txt) in the same folder as that of StegoMagic_TXT.exe
2. Run StegoMagic_TXT.exe and follow the screen instructions to embed the text message inside the JPG image.
   Please note that if you’re using Windows 7/Vista, right-click the file and select “Run as Administrator”. Otherwise the tool may fail to work properly.
3. Note down the secret decryption key.

Now you can send this image to your friend via email. To decrypt the hidden message, your friend should load this JPG file onto the Stego Magic tool and use the secret decryption key.

I hope you’ve now understood what is steganography and how to use it to hide your secret data. For queries and feedback, please pass your comments.

>> Also you can read: All Ways to Encrypt Data to Store in Cloud