Ethical Hacking (part 11.0/20): Introduction to steganography with examples and tools

How to hide secret messages inside digital objects

Note: by sharing knowledge of existing vulnerabilities, tools and countermeasures, we can prevent cyber criminals from taking inappropriate actions.

This article will cover:

1. Introduction to steganography
2. Step by step explanation of how it works
3. Steghide installation (available in Windows, Linux and Mac)
4. Hands on embedding a secret message into an image
5. Extras

Introduction to steganography

Steganography is a technique of hiding a secret message inside of a common object. It might be an image, a song, a pdf document or even an excel file.

For beginners, steganography may be confused with a cryptography. Generally, cryptography is based on techniques that mainly enables privacy. Steganography’s intention is to enable secrecy — and deceit.

Steganography has the advantage over cryptography in a sense that the secret message does not attract attention to itself as an object of scrutiny.