Steganography - The Information Hiding

Steganography applications conceal information in other, seemingly innocent media. Steganographic results may masquerade as other file for data types, be concealed within various media, or even hidden in network traffic or disk space. We are only limited by our imagination in the many ways information and data can be exploited to conceal additional information.

For many years Information Hiding has captured the imagination of researchers. Digital watermarking and steganography techniques are used to address digital rights management, protect information, and conceal secrets. Information hiding techniques provide an interesting challenge for digital forensic investigations. Information can easily traverse through firewalls undetected. Research into steganalysis techniques aids in the discovery of such hidden information as well as leads research toward improved methods for hiding information.

Steganography includes the concealment of information within computer files. In digital steganography, electronic communications may include steganographic coding inside of a transport layer, such as a document file, image file, program or protocol. Media files are ideal for steganographic transmission because of their large size. For example, a sender might start with an innocuous image file and adjust the color of every 100th pixel to correspond to a letter in the alphabet, a change so subtle that someone not specifically looking for it is unlikely to notice it.

The steganography module allows the hiding of text messages, files of any type, or both, in a 'carrier' file. A carrier file is a file that performs a function in its own right and does not appear to be anything other than what it seems, for example a photograph or a sound file might be used as a carrier file. Carrier files appear perfectly normal, they will display in image viewers or work in audio players, using the above examples. But they can also contain hidden information - other files and messages - that can be retrieved.

A steganography software tool allows a user to embed hidden data inside a carrier file, such as an image or video, and later extract that data. It is not necessary to conceal the message in the original file at all. Thus, it is not necessary to modify the original file and thus, it is difficult to detect anything. If a given section is subjected to successive bitwise manipulation to generate the cyphertext, then there is no evidence in the original file to show that it is being used to encrypt a file.

Anubis, Steghid, BMPSecrets, Darkcrypt, Image Spyer, Openpuff and OpenStego are some of the tools available for steganography.

Source - Internet