Steganography |How to hide data in pictures and audio.

In this article, we’re going to talk about steganography or you can say the art of hiding data.

We are going to learn about,

1. What is Steganography?
2. How does It work?
3. Types of steganography.
4. Steganography Challenge for you.

What is Steganography?

It is a process of hiding the data in Images or Audio files. So that no one can read it or see it. There is a lot of ways in which we can hide the data And is itself a vast field. There is an infinite number of ways one can implement it.

How does it works?

In steganography, one can hide text in a picture and the picture will look no different. There can be a second image inside a first image too.

You can never tell the difference between the original photo and the stego image just by looking at it. You can hide some data in the Photo or you can use it to send a secret message to someone.

Types of Steganography

It can be divide into five types.

1. Text Steganography
2. Image stego.
3. Video stego.
4. Audio stego.
5. Network stego.

Let’s Discuss them.

1. Text Steganography

It is a mechanism of hiding a text message into another text message

Lets’ see an example explaining it.

This is the most basic text stego in which if we combine the first letter of every word we can get a Secret Message.

But text stego can be performed at bits level and no one can tell the difference just by looking at it.

2. Image Steganography

In this we can hide message text or a another photo inside a photo.

There are lots of tools which can do image stego.

This can be done by Least significant Bit insertion(LSB). This means if you change the LSB of the file it does not affect the file, So one can hide a message in every LSB of the image.

TOOLS

1. You can use this website for hiding your message in a photo or decrypting the message in the photo -> https://stylesuxx.github.io/steganography/
2. Steghide (if you want to use steghide online click here )
3. XIAO steganography.

There are lots of tools to encode decode try to google some.

Video Steganography

In this data can be hidden in the bits of the video or mp4 file.

These are are useful when you have to hide lots of data and huge files

Video stego are divided into three categories-

1. Intra-embedding
2. Pre-embedding
3. Post-embedding

4. Audio Steganography

In this a data can be hidden in Audio or mp3 or wav file.

Audio stego can be done by many ways some of them are:

1.Lease Significant Bit Encoding

Same as image LSB. Changing the least significant bits can hide your message in the audio file without disturbing it.

2.Spread spectrum

In the spread spectrum, the message can be hidden in the spectrum of the audio file. You can see the spectrum of the audio file using tools like Audacity.

5. Network Steganography

This is a technique to hide a message in a common network protocols.

For Example, you can hide information in the header of a TCP/IP packet in some fields that are optional.

Steganography Challenge

Now comes the practical and fun part.

This a stego challenge you have to decrypt what’s inside the picture. Use tools mentioned in the article.

LEVEL – Beginner

Download the image to get started.

Try to decode the image.

Click the Hint button when you really need it.

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