8/31/2017 3 Ways to Hide Confidential Data Inside Images in Linux

3 Ways to Hide Con dential Data Inside Images in Linux

3 Ways to Hide Con dential Data Inside Images in Linuxs

Damien 7th Jul 2013

If you have a highly con dential data that you need to share with your friends, how would you send the le across without compromising on its security?
You could probably set up a passphrase, or even encrypt the le. What if you could embed the message in an image and send the encrypted image
over? The image will look exactly the same as the original and it will special tool and passphrase to extract the embedded message. This form of data
encryption is known as Steganography. Here are 3 tools that allow you to do so in Linux.

1. Steghide
Steghide is a command line tool that allows you to embed les inside an image or audio le. In Ubuntu, you can click here to install, or install it with the
command:

sudo apt-get install steghide

For rpm-based distro, you can download the rpm package from its Sourceforge site.

The usage is simple:

steghide embed -cf picture.jpg -ef secret.txt

For embedding data, you will use the steghide command with the embed option. The supported le formats must be of the following: AU, BMP,
JPEG or WAV.

To extract, you will have to use the extract option:

steghide extract -sf picture.jpg

There are several more options that you can use with steghide. Refer to its manual for the full documentation.

2. Steg
If you a more user-friendly of encrypting message in images, Steg will be the one for you. Steg comes with an easy to use GUI and is suitable for the
average joe.

There is no installation required. Simply download the build (32 bit or 64 bit) from its website, extract the le and run the steg application.

First, you import in an image that you want to add data to. It will show the image on both the left and right panel so you can see the changes in real-
time.

Click the Hide Data icon and select the le that you want to embed in the image.

Lastly, click Save to save the encrypted image. Note that it only supports saving to .tif and .png format. If you import in a .jpg le, you can only save in
tif or png format.

The good thing about Steg is that there are several encryption methods that you can con gure.

Auto: The data will be encrypted but no PassPhrase or keys will be required to extract data.

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Symmetric: when you hide data, data will be encrypted with the provided PassPhrase and the same PassPhrase is required to extract.

Asymmetric unsigned: when you want to hide data (you are the sender) only the receivers public key is required. When you want to extract data
(you are the receiver) only your private key is required.

Asymmetric signed: when you want to hide data (you are the sender) the receivers public key and your private key are required. When you want to
extract data (you are the receiver) only your private key is required but the senders public key is requested. If you dont provide the senders public
key, at the end of the the extraction process, you will be warned that the sender identity is not veri ed. If you provide the senders public key you will
be informed if sign veri cation is succeeded.

3. OutGuess
Outguess is yet another command line-based steganography tool. OutGuess extracts the redundant bits from the image, modi es them and rewrite
them back to the original position. In this case, the steganographic content cannot be easily detected in the image.

Installation of OutGuess in Ubuntu is very easy. You can install from the Software Center, or type in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install outguess

To use Outguess to encrypt content, you use the command:

outguess -d secret.txt picture.jpg picture-output.jpg

The -d ag refers to the data le you want to embed in the picture. Alternatively, you can also add a message by using the -k ag.

outguess -k 'secret message' -d secret.txt picture.jpg picture-output.jpg

As you can see from the screenshot below, Outguess will rst extract the redundant (usable) bits from the image, embed the data in and place it back to
the image. Lastly, it will check the statistics and make sure it is corrected to the same as before. Anyone that uses statistical correction to check for
encrypted content will fail to it in this case.

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To extract the data, you use the command:

outguess -k "my secret key" -r picture.jpg secret.txt

Conclusion
All the apps above allow you to embed con dential le to an image. If you prefer a user-friendly interface, use Steg. If you prefer to use audio les rather
than images, use steghide.

What other apps do you use to embed les inside images?

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