Steganography is the art and science of concealing messages in other messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message. It’s a form of security through obscurity. Steganography is often used with cryptography. Plainly visible encrypted messages, no matter how unbreakable they are, arouse interest. This weakness is avoided with steganography.
Hiding messages is not new. Before the digital age, messages were hidden with invisible ink, subtle indentations in paper, messages written in Morse code that are knitted into an item of clothing, and even tattooing messages under the hair of messengers.
Ideally, the original message is not noticeably degraded by presence of a hidden message. As a result, the most effective techniques tend to make use of data that contains a lot of redundancy, such as raw audio and image files. Steganography works much less effectively, if at all, with efficient compressed formats such as JPEG.
We recommend the following steganography tools captured in a LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. All the software is free and open source goodness.
Let’s explore the steganography tools. For each program we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources.
| Steganography Tools | |
|---|---|
| OpenStego | Java based tool to hide secret data in image files |
| stegify | Tool written in Go for LSB steganography |
| Stegano | Supports hiding data in PNG images via LSB encoding |
| zsteg | Fast detector for hidden payloads in PNG and BMP images |
| Snow | Whitespace steganography program |
| StegoVeritas | Command-line toolkit for uncovering hidden data in image files |
| jdvrif | Hide files within a JPG cover image |
| AperiSolve | Web-based toolkit running multiple steganalysis checks in one place |
| Wavsteg | Uses least significant bit steganography to hide a file in .wavs |
| Steghide | Uses an algorithm which is undetectable by color-frequency tests |
| Steganoroute | Send steganographed text messages to mtr with fake hops in the network |
| Stegoshare | Java based steganography tool |
| snowdrop | Text watermarking and watermark recovery |
| PixelSafe | Graphical utility for securely concealing data inside image files |
| Aletheia | Detect and analyse concealed messages embedded in digital images |
| Rooks | Adaptive steganography toolkit |
| Stegosuite | Steganography tool which lets hide information in image files |
| StegCracker | Steganography brute-force utility to uncover hidden data inside files |
| OutGuess | Universal steganographic tool |
| Ermis | Hide and extract secret messages within images and audio files |
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 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |
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stegify is pretty useful
Try jdvrif
We’ll take a look. Thanks Nick.