Using Steganography for Image Security

Steghide is steganography program which hides bits of a data file in some of the least significant bits of another file in such a way that the existence of the data file is not visible and cannot be proven.

Steghide is designed to be portable and configurable and features hiding data in bmp, jpeg, wav and au files, blowfish encryption, MD5 hashing of passphrases to blowfish keys, and pseudo-random distribution of hidden bits in the container data.Steghide is useful in digital forensics investigations. Normally in tela life menaing, steganography is ude d8fferent technique like using of invisible ink and other to hide data.

Let&apsos;s say for example someone is playing a kind of game to hide their location and any who finds him, get a special reward. Then we give them the clue of an image and say thats his location. If after many research, they will possibly realise that the location is embedded into the image and that he used steghide. And they will find a way to extract the file.

Bit there is another tool that is used to brute force files hidden with steghide and extract them and that tool is known as StegoBrute. So when the competitors of the game find out thsi tool they brute force the image with a word list, get jsi location and get the reward. And in thsi tutorial we will do just that.

Install StegHide and StegCracker

You will first have to install stenhide by typing this on the terminal:

apt-get install steghide

Then to install StegCracker type:

1. curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Paradoxis/StegCracker/master/stegcracker > stegcracker /bin/stegcracker

As many of you eho don't know, curl which is short for Client for URL is a Command Line Interface(CLI) tool written in C that allows receiving and sending of data in all protocols.

Set files

Now we will have to set up our files. We will use an image called anonymous.jpg and then embed the file called secret.txt and use a passphrase 12345. So we then we embed the file into the image by typing:


root@kali : ~# steghide embed -cf anonymous.jpg -ef secret.txt
Enter passphrase: 
Re-Enter passphrase: 
embedding "secret.txt" into  "anonymous.jpg" ... done

Time to Crack

Now we have locked the file into the image. Now let's try to crack it ourselves. We will use StegCracker. So we crack the file by typing:


root@kali : ~# stegcracker -f <image-file> -w <word list>

So, when we see the a ove image, we found out that stegcracker was able to crack yhe file embedded into the image with our word list(A word list is a file containing series of words and maybe numbers used for maybe password cracking.).

Extract the File

Now we've gotten the password, we can get all file information about the file by typing:


        root@kali : ~ # steghide extract -sf anonymous.jpg
Enter passphrase:

To get information about the file type :


root@kali : ~ # steghide info anonymous.jpg

Conculsion

In this tutorial, we learnt how to hide data indide an image. This could be used in the hacking world to hide secret data and payload inside image without being Incepted even when hacked. See you next time.

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