@Richard Reed, #25:

In #22 I was referring to general Steganography (see #23). Unlike you tell us, pictures with payload can be told apart unless special camouflage action are part of the steganography algorithm.

To me, it is unclear if ultima-steganography-17 is taking care of this special camouflage. If so, then you do need both original and the loaded picture. When this is not stated explicitly I would not be sure of such (be carefull).

A program like OpenPuff does take care of this special kind of camouflage by scatterring at random digits in the space that is used for storing the payload. This special camouflage is not a basic part of simple steganography, but could be important of course.

Just don't trust every steganography application will take care of such a thing.

what is the difference between version 1.6 and today's version 1.7?

This sounded too interesting to pass up. Installed fine. Tried to encrypt a 241K file into a 778K JPG, says the file isnt big enough, to choose a bigger file. Tried to do the same 241K file into a 3.609K TIF file, gave me the same error.. to find a bigger file to put this 241K file into. Seems this release is not developed enough yet.
Sorry.. Uninstalled. This is of no use to me.

Fairly new to GOTD but from perusing the forum it seems to be up to its old tricks again. "Failed to connect. Please try again later." - for 14 hours now when attempting to install/verify but perhaps it will work finally at 11:45 pm.

Thanks in advance to anyone with a positive suggestion and again to those who have posted the better alternatives.

As for you downvoters you are a bunch of dorks.

It mentions that exe files can be hidden inside a picture file. Is there a possibility that a malicious code can be sent via email?

Steganography often works by manipulating the least significant bit of data in the image file. That least significant bit can be distributed in any pattern chosen by the program's author. An unintended recipient of the processed image cannot know it contains steganography unless he has the original image for comparison. Digital photography and the digitizing of analog images involves enough noise to totally negate searches for LSB data.

A steganography program knows where in a given image to begin reading the LSB information. The first items read will tell the software whether an image contains hidden data, the data file size, how the data is organized in the carrier file, and other information such as password protection.

The unencrypted and encrypted files can have exact same size. Color differences in the two files can be due to slight image editing and do not imply steganography is being used.

Any manipulation of the carrier file will destroy the hidden file data and make it unrecoverable. In more trivial implementations of steganography some or most of the security described above may be compromised. A good steganography program should respond identically to suspected carrier files whether or not they contain hidden data unless and only if the correct passcode is entered.

Trying to hide copyright info is useless if the pirate modifies the image in any way. While a trojan virus can be transmitted to another person in a carrier file, it cannot infect a computer simply by being hidden in a graphic image. It needs to be retrieved as separate data and acted on that separate by the recipient.

Hey guys,

You don't need to have full version to extract data from an image. Paid version just creates images without red banner, but nothing is blocked in trial version to extract data from it.

Cheers.

My last comment was about steganography in general, about the proces of steganography.

Talking about ultima-steganography-17, it is a good thing that a password is used. But still these pictures can be told apart from bare pictures without any payload.

Here is a freeware steganography tool but this one is only for text and no password is used at all. The giveaway is a more secure (password) and can do more (files, also .txt-files) then hiding just text.

There are all sorts of possible steganography like hiding files in video or in Mp3 etc.

Stegography is not real security, because obfuscation is no real security. Steganography does not lock, it does only hide. The only way to secure something is by encryption.

You can put your money in a safe with a combinationlock, or you can hide your money between bookpages or whatever creative idea's might come up.

You can show me the safe in bright daylight but your money is secured with a code. When I only would know your money must be in one of the books on the shelf, I will get it in a short time.

Steganografy is not used to send stuff by mail because it is not secure. Steganography is used to hide your own stuff in case someone would have a peek in your things. There is no receiver and therefore no need for a non existing receiver to have the giveaway installed aswell. And when you did not encrypt everything you meanted to hide will be in the open.

When you know where the safe is, you might try tampering with it. I might not like that (perhapse you are going to drill a hole, a kind of "brute force" attack) and make it more difficult for you by hiding the safe. Perhapse I come up with even a more original idea then putting the safe behind a painting like in the movies. Now you don't know where to drill and you might not even come up with the idea to tamper with some safe you don't know of.

Hiding the safe is like hiding a password encrypted zipfile in a picture with steganography. However when I know there must be a safe, I am going to search your place and I will finally find it. Be sure to have locked your safe.

Pictures with payload through steganography are different from pictures that are only bare pictures. There are tools to tell these pictures apart. It is true you can not tell the difference by only looking with your eyes at the pictures, but as soon as I suspect you did hide something I will be able to tell these pictures apart.


So remember steganography is good in hiding stuff in order not to raise ideas or as a complement measure to encryption.

Using stegeanography only is not a wise thing when you really want security; always think about when hiding would be a good thing.

By the way #4 'Mark J' what you mean is the old "copy /b"-trick.
Your method has in common that you can hide a zip-file with a jpg-file, but binary your method is completely different. What the giveaway does is something you can in no whatever way do with just a DOS commandline. The giveaway disperses a file within the picture, while you only binary copy two files to one (concatenation). The extension used directs Windows to look for the header that fits that extension and processes accordingly.

Gee you can't win! LMAO!

You state some facts affecting folks' judgement about an app, and you get thumbs-downs for doing so. Oh well.. WhatchaGonnaDo?

TrekkieGrrrl (#15) had an interesting idea though. That's one place where I can see something like this actually being useful and practical as well. Containing covert copyright information for the originator, in the case of artistic theft.

Now that does make sense.

#9: "I’ve never really understood why someone would want to do this, when encryption is so widely used and so common. "

The often used phrase is: "To hide in plain sight". It's also a big part of Truecrypt, where rather than encrypt a singe file or files, you hide all of them in a [optionally nested] VHD [Virtual Hard Disk] that hopefully won't be detected. If you see an encrypted file, you can assume something's inside that's worth encrypting, & try to break the encryption.

Steganography is also used when you can't, or don't want to risk passing data or info directly... Say I want to send you a message, but I don't want to risk anyone intercepting that message, or perhaps I don't want anyone to know I contacted you at all -- I can post an image on-line that can be freely viewed by everyone, but only you know it contains a message you can extract. That's not to say it's undetectable -- the US gov has long known it was used by terrorists to hide the identities of operatives, & if they can't already detect images with Steganography, in the future they will be able to [they already sift through Vast amounts of data, so adding a filter to spot Steganography is likely no big deal].

* * *


#14: "In sum… clever technology, impractical for most applications."

If you remember a while back the US gov caught a few Russian spies - they were using Steganography. From what I read government agents were able to intercept the wireless transfer of a file or files from one agent to another, or else they would never have found it.

* * *

#15: "...you could use this to hide copyright info inside the picture. So later when some bozo posts YOUR picture after having removed the watermark, it would still contain the file with YOUR copyright info."

The problem as I see it is that once I grab your image, maybe resize or crop it a bit, maybe change the file format, &/or try to remove your conventional watermark, I'll click save & re-write the image file completely, without any sort of embedded data because the image editor can't read, doesn't know about that hidden data.

* * *


#16: " Let’s assume that you hide a file within a photograph, is the photograph size changed in any way? Example: if you hide a 256 meg file in a 1000 meg photo, is the photo now a 1,256 meg photo?"

I did not see any specifics on their site for Ultima Steganography, but what many [most?] of these apps try to do is find image data that you won't miss, & replace that with whatever it is you're embedding -- it's like when you save a file to jpeg, image data you hopefully won't notice is discarded to help make the file smaller, only in this case the file doesn't get smaller because you're adding something else.

Nice application and great comments.

What would be helpful would be an application that hides material, such as a few words in a graphic or a pdf or word process file and, after a period of time, the words appear in a way that makes the graphic or pdf or word processing file relatively useless. That kind of functionality would permit time limited files and would hinder unauthorized reproduction.

A similar application might also cause the words to appear on any unauthorized copies, but not on the "original".

No 4-Mike J

Could you please explain what you mean?

I am a little concerned about hiding a file in a picture/image. I mean the next thing some jerks might just hide a trojan using this program. Please put my mind at peace and tell me this is not possible...

Yes, dear friends, I do have a question (or 2).

1) Let's assume that you hide a file within a photograph, is the photograph size changed in any way? Example: if you hide a 256 meg file in a 1000 meg photo, is the photo now a 1,256 meg photo?

2) If you then send that photo to a friend and the friend copies that photograph, did they atomatically copy the hidden file within it?

Thanks,
Marty

I was thinking, I guess like #8, Alia, that you could use this to hide copyright info inside the picture. So later when some bozo posts YOUR picture after having removed the watermark, it would still contain the file with YOUR copyright info. But I'm not sure if the program CAN be used like this. If it can, I can certainly see uses for it.

Steg sounds intriguing, but it is of limited to use because it requires space in the "picture" to hide your information. That typically requires uncompressed graphic forms like "bmp"... and who still uses that nowadays. You're also highly limited in the amount of information you can hide in a picture. It should be obvious, but the info you are hiding can't be anywhere near the size of the picture container... so you are pretty much limited to hiding text, not binaries.

In sum... clever technology, impractical for most applications.

#8 Alia

This program does not encrypt or otherwise protect the image file. It uses the image file as a container to hide another file.

I haven't really come across any apps that will protect your art from theft once you post it on a forum or in one of the many galleries.

Maybe someone here can recommend an app that I don't know about.

#7: I don't understand... why would you add encrypted information to an image file and then sell it or post it publicly?

Wow, Giovanni - thanks for the info. It's worth at least 2.24 cents in my opinion ;)

Ashraf, thanks also - your links work just fine.

Will check all this stuff out eventually, and try US 1.7 right now due to the time limit - thank you very much GAOTD!

#7 Alia - you get today's give away so you can TRY the product for free. If it's something you want to use, commercially you then pay for it. This way you'll know if it's worth the money.

I've never really understood why someone would want to do this, when encryption is so widely used and so common.

Sure, you can tell a file is encrypted in most cases, or not - if certain steps are taken to conceal that. But if the security is tight enough, a snooper will never gain access to an encrypted file anyway. One should never use passwords like your mother's birthday or your favorite pet's name.

And, if you have serious doubts about layers of security. you can do it more than once, using multiple methods.

-JC

The program works, however there is something that surprises me. I used a gif-picture at 72kB to hide a txt-file at 5kB to produce a png-file at 92 kB. What subprises me is that when a later on used MS-Paint to convert the 72kB gif-picture to a direct corresponding png-file I ended up with 107kB, that is a bigger size than 92 kB! I wonder if MS-Paint also includes something extra during conversion, or what? Maybe I can use ultima-steganography-17 also as a conversion program to produce better file conversions than MS-Paint!

i'd like to ask what "non-commercial" use means here. Does that mean, if I use this on a picture, I can't sell the picture? Or post that picture in an art contest?
I'm interested in trying this because Art theft is very very common and a huge issue in the art community. I'd like to share this program with many of my friends and all the art forums I spend all my time in, but not if the program limitations won't allow it to be used "commercially." Please clarify! Thank you.

Yes, this GAOTD does its dirty job pretty well but can hide files only behind IMAGES and above all it cannot hide multiple files inside one single carrier.

Not a great deal for a 24 $ app, is it??

So what if you could hide for FREE your important files not only in JPEG images but also in Mp3, FLV and even into executable files (exe, msi), rather than protecting them with a password??

http://embeddedsw.net/OpenPuff_Steganography_Home.html (not for noobs)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Encrypting/Nugraha-Clotho.shtml

Want to protect for FREE your files & folders residing in your USB drives, network servers, CD/DVDs and even iPods like a PRO, instead of behind them behind an Image??

http://www.safehousesoftware.com/SafeHouseExplorer.aspx

And what if there was a FREE tool out there able to not only encrypt your files on a USB drive, but also to organize them in several categories automatically (My Pictures, My Videos, My Music, My Documents, My Archives, My Software, My Other Files etc...) ?

Too good to be true, right?? Wrong!!!

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/R-W-Flash-Drive-Explorer.shtml

And how about encrypt confidential TEXT in your (email) messages and even your EMAIL ATTACHMENTS for FREE or create secure encrypted archives ready to be sent via email to your friends ??

http://sourceforge.net/projects/encryptron
http://www.jetico.com/encryption-bctextencoder
http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-free-encryption.aspx
http://www.jetico.com/encryption-bcarchive

OK!! You love the CLOUD (Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, Mozy etc..) and/or are eager to share your files & folder with other via email, USB, LAN, P2P etc.... but at the same time you are scared by the idea that some snoopers out there may be able to capture your TCP/IP packets with professional packet sniffers like Wireshark??
Relax baby...relax!!

http://www.cloudfogger.com/en

And finally, for a more comprehensive encrypting software, besides Truecrypt and Axcrypt, just give this cool FREE & PORTABLE Italian app a shot, kissing any "Brute Force" attacks goodbye for good:

http://elefantsoftware-en.weebly.com/encoding-decoding.html

Enjoy!!

My 0.00002 cents for today's giveaway....

I'm sorry, I listed "Portable" in my short review above. I'm not sure what I was thinking -- must of had a brain fart -- because this isn't a portable program. You need to installi t.

Pretty expensive for something you can do yourself with the "copy" command in the cmd.exe window.
COPY

I had version 1.6 from an earlier giveaway. I installed this new version in the same folder. The installation was smooth and easy. There was no need to enter the key information found in the readme file. The program was still registered. For those that do not already have this, you will need to enter the key information.

I am not an expert on this type of software and I will not pretend to be. I can say I have used this to hide small files and it has worked effectively. I would think for larger files this may be limited. I mean how can someone look at an image file that is several MB's in size and not wonder what is up with it? I would think larger files would require some other sort of encryption.

Thank you GOTD team for all of your hard work. Thank you Enplase Research for your gift.

Ref: Ashraf from dotTech
Your "Review of best free steganography program for Windows" link results in a "404 Not Found" page.

Pros
*Hide any file inside an image file, with hidden files being unaccessibly without your password
*Carriers/containers (the files that hold hidden files) act and behave like normal files
*Allows users to insert an optional file description for carrier files
*Portable

Cons
*Is limited to image files as carriers/containers
*Program window cannot be resized or minimized, only closed

Free Alternatives
Review of best free steganography program for Windows

Final Verdict
Click here for final verdict and full review