Send Secret Files in an Image Using Steganography

Steganography is data hidden within data. It enables us to embed files, messages or links into an image that can’t be detected by email filters.

So we can send secret messages that are hidden in an image or video. The word steganography combines the Greek words steganos (στεγᾰνός), meaning “covered or concealed”, and graphe (γραφή) meaning “writing”.

So how easy is Steganography? Not easy, in fact it’s very complicated. So in this post we will make it easy for you.

We will be using a little tool called StegoSuite, you can download it for almost all platforms here.

It works the same over all platforms so we will be using a Windows environment for this tutorial, but the application will be sandboxed.

So once you install the application you will be asked to upload a photo that you want to use for your secret message. So let’s do that: File/Open

The green line around the application tells us that we are running this application safely in a sandbox. As we can see we uploaded a nice little quaint thatched roof cottage. The idea behind Steganography is that we are trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, so we think it fits 😉

So on first glances we can see a text area and a file area. So let’s type a small message for this demonstration.

Beautiful, you could possibly add your own file or web link in the message. Next we just need to click on the Embed button to embed the message into our image.

It takes a short while, around 30 seconds to embed the message into the image, you will see the path to the new file that was created. We downloaded the Stego file to our Downloads folder surprisingly.

Just as a side note, if you want to rename the file, you will have to upload a different file to StegoSuite, it’s a little glitch in the software but you should be aware of it.

So let’s email the new Stego image to ourselves.

Off you go email, open your email account and download the Stego photo.

It has arrived. Let’s download the image to our (or your friends device).

Now, if someone else wants to open the file and extract the information, they will also need StegoSuite installed on their own device.

Next let’s open the image via StegoSuite, you will have to do this and not open the image with your default image viewer.

The image is now loaded into the application, next we just need to hit the Extract button.

Give it a minute to extract the data.

There we go, the message was secretly sent via an image. If you want to make it even more secure, you could use the password option that only you and your friend(s) know.

Thanks for reading, please share, subscribe and call back soon. Laters 😉

QuBits 2019-10-02