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Hiding in Plain Sight PDF Print E-mail
Monday, 01 June 2009 11:41

Here's something a little different for you.

Did you know that you can hide almost anything invisibly in a JPEG picture? The only outward change to the picture is that the file size of the jpeg gets larger as you hide more files inside of it - photos, documents, mp3s, videos - anything!

This technique is a great way of keeping a secret stash of files, either on a web site so you can retrieve them from anywhere at a moments notice, keeping secure copies of things on your pc. Normally, secure archives are a little cumbersome to create, or they leave traces when you store them, or they require specialist software.... but not this technique.


ty_secretAnyway, enough of the talk - let me show you how it works! Firstly you need a copy of winzip or winrar, both of which can be downloaded for free if you've not already got a copy on your machine.

Ok, the cat photo on the right might look like a normal jpeg file, but hidden inside it is a text copy of todays ENTIRE drop list, a secret message and another jpeg file of something completely different (nothing exciting - a stock image of a Ferrari!)

All you need to do to extract these files is download the jpeg to your computer, and either:

 

  • Right click on the photo and select "Open with" then choose WinRAR or Winzip or:
  • Change the name from "ty_secret.jpg" to "ty_secret.RAR" and open with WinRAR or Winzip.
When you do this, you'll see a folder available from INSIDE the jpeg picture called "ty" which containes the secret archived files, which you can extract and view.

Still with me? Cool. Well that's all very well I hear you say, but how do I go about creating these secret archives? Well, it's actually quite simple, and this is how you create one of these secret archives.

Place the files you want to hide inside of your jpeg file in a folder, and then create a .RAR archive from the folder (or if it's a single file, just createa .RAR archive from it) using WinRAR or Winzip.

When you've got your .RAR archive, place it and the jpeg file you want to hide the archive in inside a folder together. For easy access I'd recommend placing then in a folder on your Desktop called "Hidden".

When the jpeg and the RAR archive are placed in the right folder, open your "Start Menu" and select "Run". Type "CMD" into the run box and press enter, and this will give you access to the Windows command prompt (see below). Navigate to the folder "Hidden" on your desktop by typing "cd desktop\hidden", then create the secret archive file by typing "copy /b photo.jpg + archive.RAR new_file.jpg" where:
  • "photo" is the name of the photo in the folder
  • "archive" is the name you gave the archive when you created it, and:
  • "new_file" is the name you'd like to give to the new secret archive jpeg.
You can see what I typed to create a secret jpeg on this page called "ty_secret.jpg" from a photo called "ty.jpg" and an archive called "ty.rar". Pretty cool and a bit James Bond eh? Enjoy!cmd_prompt

 

 

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