In this article I will walk through an example of Steganography, which is the ability to hide messages or other content inside of files. This can be done for a range of file types including images, audio, video, or data such as network traffic. This is relevant for two reasons. First you should be aware that it is a mechanism for people to exchange hidden information while displaying or exchanging seemingly routine content. And second, this can be a way that hackers can use to get data off of a target computer while obscuring their tracks.
Let’s walk through an example of image steganography, adding a hidden message to an image, and then reversing the process to pull the message out of the image.
You can try this out for yourself on the following free website. https://stylesuxx.github.io/steganography/
We start by uploading an image we would like to use to carry the message, typing in the message and then clicking the encode button. In this case I’ll be putting in a shopping list as an example.
After encoding you can save the resulting image file. To reverse the process you can click the tab for decode, upload the file with the hidden message and click the decode button.
And there we can see the secret message was decoded.
This message is encoded into the image file itself. It takes the message text and converts it into binary, hiding it amongst the other information in the file that displays the image itself.
image is creative commons public domain. source: https://picryl.com/media/secret-hidden-message-311b95
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