"Stago" In .GIF's ^o) - Printable Version

"Stago" In .GIF's ^o) - Printable Version

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+----- Thread: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) (/showthread.php?tid=43635)

"Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by M73A on 04-25-2005 at 06:18 PM

anyone seen the film Along Came A Spider?

the little girl passes notes in class use .gif images with "stago" coding and the investigator tells the cop guy its a string of texts hidden in the 0's and 1's and cannot be read without a password....

what i was wondering is this an actual method of 'passing notes' so to speak or is it just a film thing... sometimes films are based on real life things thought this may be?

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by Eljay on 04-25-2005 at 06:21 PM

yeh ive seen a film like that (if its in russia or sumthing its the same one probably)

i doubt its real though

you could of course send a passworded zip with a text file in it 8-)

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by M73A on 04-25-2005 at 06:23 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Lee Jeffery
yeh ive seen a film like that (if its in russia or sumthing its the same one probably)

i doubt its real though

you could of course send a passworded zip with a text file in it

russia? might be finking of the russian prince or whoever the lil kid is, i no hes somethings soviet..i cant rmemeber im watchin it but not up to that yet... hes the one shes passing the notes to.....

could send a zip but i found this interesting

lol.

real?

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by CookieRevised on 04-25-2005 at 06:25 PM

Such a method of encoding stuff inside other file formats is as old as the computer industry.

As a matter of fact, in the past there were many contests where people had to try to "crack" the implemented messages in Word documents, GIF files, graphical data, etc... (I also once participated with one of those contests back in the 80's)

Thus, no this isn't simply a movie-thing. It actually exists and is "used" widely and information about this can be found on many sites around the web. (This method of encapsulating messages inside other "normal" formats has an actual name, but I forgot it )...

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by KeyStorm on 04-25-2005 at 06:27 PM

You have seen those pieces of paper with some little holes that, when placed over a certain text, revealed a secret message, don't you?

Well, the system is similar, but it happens bitwise in here, so it's a huge number of holes to get a decent text message (at least 8 holes ofr a letter)

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by Vilkku on 04-25-2005 at 06:27 PM

You can add information, like text, to images so that you can't see it viewing the image. I have no idea how you could protect it.

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by M73A on 04-25-2005 at 06:27 PM

quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
Such a method of encoding stuff inside other file formats is as old as the computer industry.

As a matter of fact, in the past there were many contests where people had to try to "crack" the implemented messages in Word documents, GIF files, graphical data, etc... (I also once participated with one of those contests back in the 80's)

Thus, no this isn't simply a movie-thing. It actually exists and is "used" widely and information about this can be found on many sites around the web. (It also has an actual name, but I forgot it)...

kool

woah 80's thats to new for my ict teacher :dodgy:

this should wind him up, lol

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by KeyStorm on 04-25-2005 at 06:28 PM

I think this is called steganography.

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by WDZ on 04-25-2005 at 06:30 PM

quote:
Originally posted by KeyStorm
I think this is called steganography.

Yeah, I was just about to post that. Here's some linkage...

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/steganography.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

Quite interesting. I've heard about it but never bothered to try it.

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by CookieRevised on 04-25-2005 at 06:39 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Vilkku
You can add information, like text, to images so that you can't see it viewing the image. I have no idea how you could protect it.

It isn't about adding comments or stuff like using the author field to add messages, nor is it about pasword protecting files like Lee Jeffery suggested, but it is about actually using unused bits and bytes or using unsignificant bits and bytes to encode messages (like KeyStorm said). For example: bits and bytes wich normaly would be used to contain graphical data.

a very crude example of one possebility:
when you save the pixels of an image the actualy pixel values are saved. If you construct your image (or rather the colors) so that you use only high values, the lower values wouldn't make much of a difference (especially when you use many colors like in 32bit graphics). In other words, you can use the lower bit values to encapsulate text messages.

pixel values (bitwise) for four original pixels: 01100000 11110000 11100000 10010000

Now for the human eye a pixel value of 01100000 will be roughly the same as 01101010. So you can use the lower 4 bits to actually hold text information. and when you combine such two lower fields of 4 bits, you have 1 full byte, in other words 1 character.

Thus when we save our image we can instead of saving
01100000 11110000 11100000 10010000
save
01101001 11110000 11101101 10011001
and thus the lower bit fields will be
1001 0000 and 1101 1001
and they are the ASCII codes for:
10010000 = H
11011001 = i

When viewing this image, you will notice nothing out of the ordinary. But put through the correct decoder, it can extract the plain text message "Hi".

This is one of billions of possible methods you can use. Another group of encoding is by manipulating graphic data so it contains other graphical data (this can of course be text again, but it must be viewed with a graphic editor in that case, so it isn't quite the same as extracting plain text from something, but the technics are the same though).

(and of course you could protect it by any method you choose like coding the text further with a password or something only you and the reciever would know... now isn't this fun for all you paranoid people

I'd suggest you all to investigate all those graphics found on the net for hidden messages

lol)

quote:
Originally posted by KeyStorm
I think this is called steganography.

yup, that's the one

quote:
Originally posted by WDZ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

Quite interesting. I've heard about it but never bothered to try it.

That one shows indeed a very nice exmaple of another method of encapsuling graphic data within another graphic. (Y)

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by M73A on 04-25-2005 at 06:47 PM

ok, ive been googleing "steganography" since my last post....im trying to find a tool to be able to do it no luck though

WOW, Cookie, thats interesting i wanna use this in school now, lol.....

need a program or something to do it, what would i need :'( ? i cant find it...although i did find :
http://wwwrn.inf.tu-dresden.de/~westfeld/f5.html

This site goes into a lot of detail about Steganography....

http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1684

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by CookieRevised on 04-25-2005 at 06:50 PM

quote:
Originally posted by may73alliance
ok, ive been googleing "steganography" since my last post....im trying to find a tool to be able to do it no luck though

There isn't one single method. You make your own method of encapsulating data into some other format. And that's why you will not find many programs to do this as it has unlimited methods for doing it. The programs you may find are simply examples of what can be done. The limit (and best method) is your own imagination...

It is just the same as with encryption. Everybody can make their own encryption method (example: Patchou made his own for the chatlogs)...

quote:
Originally posted by may73alliance
need a program or something to do it, what would i need?

Very good knownledge of your target file format (eg: know everything about GIF file format and how it is saved), very good overall knowlegde of how things are saved, programming skills and imagination.

quote:
Originally posted by may73alliance
i cant find it...although i did find :
http://wwwrn.inf.tu-dresden.de/~westfeld/f5.html

That's indeed another method invented by someone...

Like we said, there isn't 1 method in doing this. Everybody can use his own method...

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by Ahmad on 04-25-2005 at 06:55 PM

i used to have a program called wbSteganography Tool v4.1i but i cant find a link for it anymore, but try looking for it

RE: "Stago" In .GIF's ^o) by M73A on 04-25-2005 at 07:18 PM

quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
That's indeed another method invented by someone...

Like we said, there isn't 1 method in doing this. Everybody can use his own method...

ok, hmm. whats the easiest way

, lol. im not to good at all the binary codes etc.... i would learn it but i dont have much time with exams going on... so im just looking for a program to do it....

theres one on the sites i found called F5 which is quite simple but i get a Jview.exe *german words i dont know* error....

Frontend also seems to do it but i dont no how to read them after, lol.. so i cant check.....

any ideas for a quick solution? if not ill have to put it on my to-do list :tongue:

error = "'jview.exe' konnte nicht ausgefuhrt werden!"

jview.exe could not be carried out

ok. 1 whats jview.exe...
2. how do i get it or make it work? lol

thanks

was looking for 'mp3stego'

and found a list of programs - http://www.petitcolas.net/fabien/steganography/stego_soft.html

ALSO: Ahamad - http://wbstego.wbailer.com/ wbstego??