IT Security Stack Exchange
IT Security Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [steganography]

Steganography is the art of hiding data within other data. Ann sends a message to Bob. With encryption Eve could see the message but not read it. With steganography Eve would not see the message.

Steganography ( steganos - covered; graphie - writing ) is the art of hiding a message within another message. An example would be hiding a text file in the data of a graphics file.

Compare this to cryptography. Imagine Ann wants to send a message to Bob. Ann decides to encrypt the image and send it. This means that if Eve intercepts the message she'll know it exists, but she will not be able to decrypt it. With steganography Eve will not know the message exists, but if she did she would be able to read it.

Steganography has several failure points.

  • Poor choice of cover data
  • Poor preparation of hidden data
  • Poor choice of method of hiding

Some steganographic software available produces 'hidden' data that is trivially easy to detect; there are steganography detection softwares available.

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Can morse code be called steganography?

Steganography means "hidden writing", where we send messages in hidden ways. Does this mean that something only experts can understand is called steganography?
Israr Ahmad
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Printer Steganography/Watermarking

I am referring to the yellow dots which are printed automatically by laser printers. They encode information such as the time the document is printed as well as the serial number. There appears to be quite little information on this subject…
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What cryptosystem makes the encrypted text look like random noise?

Suppose one wants to setup a cryptographic protocol in which 2 parties communicate using an encryption scheme that produces encrypted messages indistinguishable from random data (the desired property) given that the adversary does NOT KNOW the key…
dandroid
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Distinguishing SSH and HTTPS traffic

Alice is an employee of Chris, and Chris does heavy traffic monitoring via its company proxy. Alice wishes to use a Bob's web service while preserving privacy and confidentiality. She has full control over a miner machine which is reachable from the…
ulidtko
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Best way for a hacker to hide a file on Linux?

Suppose a hacker obtains a shell on my Linux host and wants to hide a file. What's the best way for him to do this? You may assume unprivileged or root access. My thoughts are Use a .file filename (pretty easy to find these of course) Write a…
Fixee
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Image steganography and tracking

We are running an online-press media-library. On this site many brands are uploading images and track press users download and views per image. But some brand now want to add unique code in image so they can track their own images. We tried some…
Girish
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Which graphic image formats contain revision history? Does the image editing software being used matter?

It's common knowledge among graphic designers that they can rename a PDF file and import it into Illustrator and access the "layers" within the document, revealing hidden information. I don't know enough about the binary image formats (jpeg, bmp,…
makerofthings7
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How easy is it to find a password in a huge text file?

Say that my password is PASSWORD1 I have a 10MB jumbled text file. I hide my password in two parts in the text, between > and < so I can find it myself. Then I put the 2 parts together and add the 1 by keyboard. How easy is it for security experts…
Peter
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How to implement reset password for a password manager

How could I best implement a reset password functionality for a password manager? I'm currently saving a hashed + salted master password, which is hashed with PBKDF2, and encrypting the passwords with the master password itself, however if a user…
Dennis van Gils
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What is network steganography?

I am new very new to networking concepts I do not have any idea about network steganography. Can anyone please explain what it is. what is its advantages and disadvantages?
Mohit Dagar
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How to determine if JPG EXIF data has been changed by "OEM" software (without third party tools)?

I have a JPG and I am analyzing it to determine it's efficacy. The image metadata clearly indicates that the image was digitized at 15:10:13, Dec 31, 2015 and I need to determine if this date digitized has been altered in any way. Notes: I have…
Matthew Peters
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Are NTFS Alternate File Streams considered a security risk in your organisation; how is it mitigated?

Alternate File Streams allows a user to embed hidden content within any NTFS file. That file can be a TXT file, or MOV for example. Some may consider this a form of steganography, and therefore the same auditing principals may apply. On the other…
makerofthings7
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Is there any way to write-protect a USB or hide its contents from deletion without hardware modifications?

Data on external storage devices are not secure, I understand that. Despite hardware modifications they can still be hacked etc. However files can be hidden (steganography) or encrypted. I'm wondering if there is any way of hiding a collection of…
liamzebedee
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Do digital cameras perform steganography / watermarking?

It is well documented that one should consider that all modern printers perform steganography / watermarking in the back of their users. Is such a feature also documented / are there rumors of similar features with the raw pixel matrix coming out of…
Zorglub29
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What to do with output files from binwalk?

I am testing my steganography skills on www.root-me.org. I downloaded a challenge. Here is the challenge image file. I used binwalk and it showed me the following: root@kst-Inspiron-5458:/home/kst/Desktop# binwalk ch1.png DECIMAL HEXADECIMAL…
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