Different Ways To Secretly Hide Message In Image

What is the difference between privacy and secrecy? When something is private, you don’t mind if others know it’s there, as long as they don’t have access to it. For example, other people know you have a credit card number, but as long as they don’t know what it is, they can’t use it.

The science (or art) of hiding messages in pictures is called Stenography, and in the digital age, can be used to hide secret messages in innocent-looking images. Looking at the picture, you have no idea there’s a secret message hiding inside, but with the correct tools or passwords, the secret message can be revealed. As with everything, the digital age made creating these secret messages easier than ever. Want to give it a go? Here are some tools for you to try.

While this might not be Stenography , it’s a great way to convey a secret message only to its target audience, and is a great example of the use of this technique in today’s world.

The DIY Way

If you’re the kind of person that likes to do things himself, this method is as DIY as it gets. You may have to try it several times to find the best picture to hide your message in, but keep in mind that a simple MS Paint (or equivalent) drawing would work best.

This method is based on a process which basically combines two files — an first is image and another is text message file — so that on the outside the image looks like an ordinary one, but if you know where to look, you can find the hidden message. If you’re not a Windows user, I apologize in advance, but since I am one, I am only able to show this method on Windows.

To start, find or create a JPG or JPEG or BMP file in any way you wish. the easiest way was to draw something simple and save it as JPG or JPEG or BMP whatever you want, but you can also try it with a real image. If you go for an image, try to find a relatively small one.

I am using this image to hide my secret message

Next, create your message in Notepad or a similar program, and save your message in TXT format.

Save this file with ".txt" extension.

Now it’s time to have some fun. Open Command Prompt, and type in the following :

copy “<image file path>” + “<text file path>” “<new image path>”.

You can get a better idea of what this will look like in the screenshot below.

In my case image & text file is save in "C:\stg\"

Name your new image whatever you want (In my case I named new image as scret.bmp) , but

remember that this is your actual secret message image, so don’t name it “secret message” if you
really want it to be a secret. The new image will also be a JPG or JPEG or BMP file, as your
specified. So anyone who sees it will double click it to open and see only the image. If, however,
someone in the know opens it using Notepad, they’ll find the secret message hiding all the way at the

Yes, this might not be the most sophisticated way to do this, but it’s easy and it works.

Secretbook [Chrome]

Secretbook is a fairly new Chrome extension that lets you encode messages into Facebook photos, and then share them with friends as if they were regular photos. Friends in the know and who have the password will be able to decipher the secret message hidden inside the image .

After installing the extension, you’re going to have to refresh Facebook, and press ctrl+alt+a to create a new encrypted message. If this shortcut is taken by something else, as it was for me, there’s not much you can do about it. I ended up shutting down the program that was stealing the shortcut, as there’s currently no way to change it.

Upon hitting the shortcut, the window above will open, where you’ll have to choose an image, and enter the message and a password. Each image can contain a different number of characters, and Secretbook will let you know how long your message can be.

You can then download the file and upload it to Facebook. To decipher the message, press ctrl+alt+a while looking at the picture, and input the password. If the password is correct, the message will be displayed!

Free Steganography Tools

The below Steganography Tools can help you to perform a live demo of what we discussed so far. The word Magic is useless without a real performance and in the same way Steganography is useless unless you try it, so let’s run the show.

Steghide

Download and extract the steghide-0.5.1-win32.zip (1.73 MB) file.
Steghide is a command line executable that you have to run from your command prompt.
Launch Run window (windows key + R), type CMD and press Enter.
Navigate to the path where you have extracted the Steghide files.
Before you proceed further ensure that you have placed two files in the folder where you have extracted Steghide: An image file and a text file with your secret message in it.
Now in command prompt enter the below command:

steghide.exe embed -cf Pic.jpg -ef ArticPostSecretMessage.txt

You will be asked to enter a passphrase, without this passphrase you won’t be able to extract the message back so make sure you don’t lose it.

-cf is the cover file that is used for embedding the data and supports AU, BMP, JPEG or WAV formats only.

-ef is the embed file that contains the secret message.

Also while embedding ensure that the cover file size is greater than the embed file else you will get the below message:

steghide: the cover file is too short to embed the data.

The message in the ArticPostSecretMessage.txt will be now hidden into Pic.jpg.

Now send the picture to your friend and ask him to extract the message from the picture with the help of the below command:

steghide.exe extract -sf Pic.jpg

He needs Steghide and the correct passphrase in order to extract the message that is inside the image.

More?

There are other tools you can use to create hidden messages in images. S-Tools for Windows and iSteg for Mac are two such examples we’ve covered in the past, and if you’re looking for desktop apps to create your secret messages, these are great ones to try

Did you manage to create some hidden messages? Which is your favorite method? Do you know of an excellent way I didn’t mention? Tell us everything in the comments.