Hiding Secrets With Steganography On FreeBSD 424
BSD Forums writes "Bad guys in the movies all keep their wall safes hidden behind paintings. Is there a metaphor in there for your sensitive files? OnLamp's Dru Lavigne explores steganography, or hiding secret messages in images or sounds, with the outguess and steghide utilities on FreeBSD."
BSD isn't dying... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Commercial for BSD! (Score:3, Insightful)
You say you "fail to see legitimate uses". Very well. Would you have a legitimate use for a safe? I will assume "yes"... we all have valuables. So let me ask you this: does it make more sense to put the safe in the middle of a wide open room, standing out, maybe even with a sign that says "The safe is here!" Or maybe instead, hide it somewhere. At least in
Re:Commercial for BSD! (Score:3, Informative)
Now if we were going just by technical merits (or even moral merits) something like Apple should have died its righteous death a long time ago. But, I guess people need to worship on the altar of 'alternative', even if they are getting robbed blind for it. IMO, Apple is the worst monopolist ever (well, aside from someone truly attrocious like DeBeers).
makes you wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:makes you wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll tell you what the Demon is hiding -- our intellectual property, fer cryin' out loud.
Boies? I hope you're getting all this. The damned open source, heathen, communist hippies are deliberately flaunting their ability to conceal the code they've ripped off in an image of some goddamned devil. If that isn't proof enough of a conspiracy to rip us off, I don't know what is!
</Darl McBride>
Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:3, Informative)
He also offers a public domain stenography app in portable C [fourmilab.ch].
Those looking for really random numbers, of course, will know about his HotBits [fourmilab.ch].
Re:Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:5, Interesting)
Please, please, please, avoid steganography and use standard cryptography if you want to protect data. Steganography's security lies in the idea that if you conceal the method with which data is obscured, you conceal the data. This is a very bad way to assume security. In any data protection scheme, you should always assume your enemy has the algorithm used to obscure the data, but that only you have the secret (key).
I do realize that steganographic techniques now will encrypt data then insert the encrypted bytes into the image, but if it is so easy to extract the steganographically encoded information, what's the point of encoding it in the first place? Differential steganalysis seems to be an easy enough method of finding steganographically encoded data, so recovering the information encoded into an image or whathaveyou is somewhat of a trivial problem, and if there is a trivial step in your data protection scheme, it should just be removed, because it's pointless.
Kerkhoff must be rolling in his grave.
Re:Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:5, Insightful)
or
A securely encrypted message, hidden in a file with ostensibly another purpose, such that there is no way to prove the existence of the hidden message would keep anyone from telling you: "Reveal the secret key to this obviously encrypted file, or face contempt of court and an automatic prison sentence."
Re:Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:3, Informative)
You make an excellent point. However, if the Department of Homeland Security suspected that you were hiding data within your own obscure files, they could search the files themselves for "extra" data. They can prove such a message exists, even if they can't discover what the message is.
Heck, within the steghide program itself you can see if a file cont
Re:Is this limited to FreeBSD only? (Score:3, Interesting)
However, if the Department of Homeland Security suspected that you were hiding data within your own obscure files, they could search the files themselves for "extra" data. They can prove such a message exists, even if they can't discover what the message is.
This is true, but finding well-encrypted data is much harder than finding plaintext data. Plaintext data has certain statistical properties, i.e. in ordinary English ascii-text some characters are used more often than others. Cipher text usually resem
Main reason to use steganography: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're missing the point.
The main reason to use steganography is that it hides the fact that you are hiding something. If you use straight encryption, it is obvious that you have something sensitive that you want to encrypt (most people don't go to the trouble of encrypting things otherwise). Steganography helps you fly under the radar and send encrypted data without people knowing that you are sending encrypted data in the first place.
If someone is already suspicious of you, then of course they can a
Hiding pr0n? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course being an adult now it's not as required, but I suppose it might be able to hide offensive pr0n images inside more innocent ones - so that anyone looking finds pretty mild things and stops there, without being able to find things that would get you looked at oddly in church
Re:Hiding pr0n? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hiding pr0n? (Score:4, Interesting)
Stego is so old news (Score:5, Funny)
Just raising the background chatter to a dull roar.
Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Security through obscurity is fine _as an additional layer_ - can't even begin to decrypt something you can't find.
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
The results of my wardialing from payphones or my list of machines/users/passwords was always only on removeable media, encrypted, and then simply hidden in gif files.
Back then the Feds and the other goons that you heard harassing others or trying to jail them were not savvy/smart enough to dig very deep. Hell we use to openly trade information in Gif files on a national BBS, although we did get sloppy. The more naked the chick in the picture, the better the info was inside it with one exception... targets we were after were in the "ugly" files.
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Funny)
you put your soldiers in armoured transports... but they still wear camoflauge!
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
When I Steg an image I encrypt the text first then plant it into the picture.
Even if you figure out that the image has been Stegged you won't know if you get the
Method I used to put it in because you can't read it. But all the receiver needs to do is use the correct decoding in Steg and then un encrypt the images. You may be able to tell there is something in the picture but reading it is another matter.
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
It leaves a telltale header "-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----"
This makes it very easy to find encrypted messages as you can apply a simple filter.
One of the benefits of steganography is that is looks like a JPG file being emailed or a JPG(PNG) sitting there on a website. Without very special software there is no easy way of even knowing that the picture of grandpa on the tractor is anything but a picture of grandpa on the tractor.
When I was playing with it, I would encrypt the text using PGP then embed it in a image using JSteg. It was fun but not particularly useful since nothing I had to say or email was worth anything to anyone important. Having said that, should (when) the revolution comes it will not be televised [gilscottheron.com], it will be stegged so I'm keeping those skills.
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Informative)
b) you don't have to output to ascii armor. (although I'm certain that the resulting files still have a recognizable, openpgp compliant structure.)
Yes, except (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, except (Score:3, Informative)
*sigh*
dave
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, encryption is hiding a needle in a very large haystack, and stego is hiding a carefully disguised strand of hay in a not-so-big haystack. The end result is that similar attacks are required to break either scheme (theoretically), so from a conceptual point of view neither should be preferred over the other.
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Done properly... (Score:3, Informative)
While this is true, in fact it is the definition of good steganography, I'm not aware of any steg that actually achieves this. For a while, there were no public methods that break Outguess, but that was broken over a year ago, and I don't think there are any stego schemes still standing. The problem is that the last bit of your WAV file or GIF isn't very random in a real picture, not nearly as random as you might g
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
... The bad guys get the same catalogs you do!
Re:Good stuff, but... (Score:3, Informative)
The great thing about being disorganized... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, dates don't seem to understand the logic of living in an apartment that already looks like it's been rifled through.
Re:The great thing about being disorganized... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I upload 500 photos a month to the net Each of them contain something in the photo (results of
I've seen this used many times and is used in nature by birds and fish...
a school of 500 fish makes it impossible for a predator to single out one specific fish.
Re:The great thing about being disorganized... (Score:2)
Here's some arguments I've tried that may work with your SO.
Fuzzy Logic - It sort of goes in this pile, but it could go a little bit into those other piles too.
Chaos - It's actually a more advanced form of order she just doesn't understand yet.
Shortest Path - I'm never more then a few feet from anything I need.
Strange Attractor - Things just end up this way over as movements are i
Steg is fairly useful, but it is crackable (Score:5, Insightful)
Hiding messages in Pics of grandma (Score:5, Funny)
"See these naked pics of grandma!"
How come ... (Score:5, Interesting)
And how is that different than... (Score:3, Insightful)
Where have YOU posted objecting to abuses like the above?
Well?
No... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, bad guys in movies walk into the Rich Dude's house, immediately realize where the safe is, pull the painting away and get whatever's in the safe. How many times have we said that security through obscurity isn't security, and now we're all clamoring about obscuring data to make it safer.
Data-wise, it seems like you'd need to be hiding a relatively small amount of data. Otherwise, you're like an elephant trying to blend in at an LA cocktail party.
Re:No... (Score:2, Funny)
Delta Burke did this for years
Re:No... (Score:2)
Re:No... (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to use hollowed out books in college for safe storage from the idiot friends my roommate had, same as the trick of the first 4 bottles of beer in the fridge were filled with piss, the pattern of real beer versus piss was changed weekly by the beer owner. It kept the mooch friends out of the beer, although was a bit wierd to have bottles of piss in the fridge as far as I was concerned.
You can
Nice trick (Score:2)
If I was your roommate, I'd start rotating your bottles of beer. Or did you also unobtrusively mark them?
My strateg
Re:No... (Score:2)
Except that the more of those fake rocks you see in the store, the more they begin to look alike, and yet different from real rocks.
Then you begin to spot them around peoples homes.
Security by obscurity isn't secure.
As for the beer bottle prank, I'd just check to see if the bottlecap is loose or dented. Or if the contents of the bottle smelled like pee.
The book trick is a timeless classic.
wbs.
Re:No... (Score:3, Interesting)
So myBankAccountNumbers.jpg becomes mban.o and myMistressesAddressAndPhone.jpg becomes maap.o.
Then drop em in with your system files. Done.
On Window$, rename them to
OR, drop them into your MySQL data folder, and rename to pictures to match what's in there. This might work for you if you use MySQL and do regular backups.
So it'
Re:No... (Score:3, Insightful)
The only problem here is to keep track of what is what. After a couple of files, it's going to be a pain to remember which file has your pr0n site passwords in it, versus Gramma's cookie recipe.
Well obviously you only have to keep track of one file, the one which holds the list of all the other files you've got with encrypted content.
. Al.Re:No... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are using stegged files (they do not have to be images) to communicate with others, then you are hiding the channel. This is a potentially very useful mechanism against automated monitoring tools, particularly if the data is first encrypted. Isolated information in high-volume channels can be very hard to detect. Another use would be to help defeat traffic analysis.
This is not to say that steganography is a magic means of information hiding. But it is one of the useful tools.
Re:No... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No... (Score:2)
Really cool demo... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Really cool demo... (Score:2)
Bad Guys? (Score:5, Interesting)
Every citizen of these modern times is a criminal, and because everyone is a criminal, everyone should use steganography. Most criminals are not BAD GUYS, but instead, good loving parents, patriots, and friends to society. It no longer makes sense to equate criminal to BAD.
Great Observation (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like calling downloaders 'pirates' and 'theft'.
Not so good.. (Score:5, Informative)
- jsteg,
- jphide (unix and windows),
- invisible secrets,
- outguess 01.3b,
- F5 (header analysis),
- appendX and camouflage.
Stegbreak is used to launch dictionary attacks against JSteg-Shell, JPHide and OutGuess 0.13b.Re:Not so good.. (Score:2, Insightful)
if EVERY picture on a website trigger's it's detection and yet you find nothing in them you begin to suspect the usefulness of the tool.
here lies the true power in stenagraphy.
Re:Not so good.. (Score:3, Funny)
That's right: for every picture with a real hidden message, you have 10,000 with the following text:
"What the fuck do you think YOU'RE looking for?
Madonna"
How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I take the encrypted bits of the message (which already look a lot like random noise) and hide them inside the least significant bits of a bitmap file. Lets assume that I'm using a half-decent steganography tool here, and it distributes the bits of the message throughout the image in a psueudo-random fashion.
So now we've got a stream of encrypted bits, which more or less resembles a stream of psueodo-random numbers. And we've sprinkled these bits all over the place inside the image, so they don't even appear together or in order.
How does one go about detecting that there's a message in there, reliably? What distinguishes the [pseudo]randomly-distributed [psuedo]random-bits of the encrypted message from the background noise of the image?
(I am assuming, of course, that the message we're trying to hide is relatively small - at most, 1 bit per byte in the image is modified. Much more than that is like trying to hide a tractor trailer behind a go-kart)
Re:How? (Score:3, Interesting)
Are there secrets in the opensource images? (Score:5, Interesting)
(Maybe a "If you can read this, you're too paranoid" sort of message in the Redhat splash picture?)
How to hide files in windows (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How to hide files in windows (Score:2)
And how is this different from any other OS?. Take a look in /usr/lib/ and tell me that you know what every library there does.
Call it /usr/lib/libsxprtVnp12.0c.49.so. If you want to avoid accidental deletion of unused libraries by an overenthusiastic sysadmin, make it using gcc, export a few symbols as wrappers of libc functions, and relink some gnome applications (which uses hordes of libraries anyway) to use it.
Re:How to hide files in windows (Score:3, Funny)
Steganographers Need To Hide Their Tools Too (Score:3, Insightful)
Adding hooks to libraries and hiding executable code in data areas and coming up with slick ways of calling into that code when you actually do some stega processing is an area ripe for exploration. It may be more challenging than data hiding as well, especially when you consider the huge libraries of md5sums for all known executables and libraries that are maintained and distributed by computer forensics people.
Does this mean ... (Score:2, Interesting)
I can hide my entire pr0n collection in a single gigpixel [slashdot.org] image?
Seriously, though, I read a news article some time ago describing how the FBI are onto such data hiding techniques after discovering terrorists (ok, "Arabs") had been posting stego encrypted messages in images posted to various popular terrorist (there I go again!) websites.
Don't know to what extent they're "onto" it (they never say, do they?), but I imagine looking for secret clues [abeautifulmind.com] can be a full-time job.
I wonder . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I wonder . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Of course.
These utilities usually use bits that will not make a change apparent to a human observing the data with our normal senses (ie. the last bit in each color field) so obviously doing anything to change the bit pattern will destroy the message.
Re:I wonder . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm. If it does, you could use it to your advantage. Encrypt your message. Use steg to hide it in an image. For that added level of (ob)s(e)curity you could hue shift the image whatever values you wanted before hiding your message in it. Adjust the values to "normal" before sending it.
To completely decrypt it, you would have to be ab
Re:I wonder . . . (Score:2, Interesting)
Not me, but I can imagine various scenarios where steg would be useful. e.g. espionage -- where you use a one time pad to encrypt the info, then steg to insert it in a jpeg which you could transport through airports, etc. on a memory card in your digital camera. Much less incriminating than carrying a floppy or cd...
I can imagine that a similar "stealth" technique could be employed using mp3s and an iPod.
Re:I wonder . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
This is usually not completely reversible. You'd better experiment on the file before doing that, or you'll lose data.
why the old stuff? (Score:5, Interesting)
There is enough new and interesting (and better) stuff around. For example, rubberhose [rubberhose.org] would've been much more interesting to read about.
Interesting.. (Score:2)
Does this disqualify me as a slashbot?
Examples of good steno-encryption (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a good read.
Lies, Deceipt, and Trickery
The rest of the hack does everything it can to hide itself. There are two major components to the disguise: the "fake" hack, and the JPEG image of Tux.
Firstly the fake hack. The fake hack begins at offset 0xD00 in the game save. If you disassemble the game save, you are likely to notice that some interesting stuff begins there. It appears to be getting it's own address, turning off write protection in memory, patching the kernel, and calling XLaunchNewImage. There is some branching logic which seems to imply that it is patching the kernel in different ways, depending on the value of location 0x8001FFFF in memory. The patches even resemble those that certain modchips perform, some are even at the same offsets. The path to the linux xbe is noticeable as well, at offset 0xFD5.
Upon initial inspection this code seems very plausible. When you look at it closer, there are a lot of inconsistencies. Firstly, the value being tested at 0x8001FFFF does not match up to any known kernels that I know of anyway. Secondly, a lot of the patches to the kernel are junk code and don't make any sense. Thirdly, there is no call to IoCreateSymbolicLink in order for the call to XLaunchNewImage to work. XLaunchNewImage checks to make sure that the path to the executable resides on the 'D:' drive to prevent applications being launched from the hard drive, and therefore only from the DVDROM drive. Without remapping \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1 to 'D:' using IoCreateSymbolicLink, there is no way for the kernel to find the default.xbe as specified.
Secondly there is the Tux JPEG. Starting at offset 0x1080 in the game save is a JPEG image. This is obvious from the text JFIF which is present in all JPEG headers. If you extract out this block, you get a nice little picture of Tux. Seems like a harmless little addition by a linux fanatic. It is typical of linuxheads to stick stuff like this everywhere. In reality, the real hack is encrypted and stored in this image. The practice of storing data in images is known as steganography. Perhaps this doesn't count, as it stores the data in the header and not in the actual image data. It's still rather devious. We'll come back to the contents of the hidden data in a moment.
Re:Examples of good steno-encryption (Score:4, Funny)
What sort of security is it when you put a non-hyperlinked URL with a space in it in your post?
It looks like a link, but I can't click on it... Hmmm... maybe if I copy it and paste it into the browser... no! it still doesn't work!
Now that's security.
Yeah, steganography (Score:5, Funny)
That's what I told my girlfriend.
pfah. (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a link to a whole steg. file system: (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.mcdonald.org.uk/StegFS/
Why put the data in comment blocks? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not make the data truly hidden by using the least significant bit within each of the RGB values for a 24 bit color image? 8 bytes of image data can hide 1 byte of data.
If you can repeat the hidden message enough times you might even be able to use this within a jpeg image and have the message survive recompress
mine (Score:2, Funny)
Featured on Navy:NCIS (Score:2, Interesting)
Steganography (Score:3, Funny)
Better compression = more difficult to hide... (Score:5, Informative)
Steganography detection is doing rather well - it simply realizes when the compression is "wrong", that is, if it would have been compressed better if there wasn't hidden info in the image.
By the way, for legal purposes it might be just as efficient to use something like Bestcrypt's hidden container - it's a very smart, yet "dumb" form of steganography. You create an encrypted container, which has a key. Then you create a hidden container inside the encrypted container, with a different key. There's no way to detect the presence of a hidden container - it looks like random data in a container full of random data.
If required by law to provide a key, provide the key to the outer container. When asked about a hidden container, go "What hidden container?" Even if it is very likely that there is one, there's no proof of that. Even the wackiest RIP bill doesn't require you to provide decryption keys to things that doesn't provably exist.
Kjella
Obvious solution... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also tends to confuse the detectors, as they are not trying all (n) possible ways the file could have been compressed to look for steg data in the raw file, only looking at the compression errors in the current format.
For every scheme, a crack, for every crack, a new scheme. What fun the merry go round is!
Steganography Filesystem (Score:4, Interesting)
Ideally the software would only need to be pointed to a directory or a wildcard, given a passphrase and be able to just "mount" those files. I.E.
Some Steganography can be detected (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, what do you guys need to hide? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, if I lived in China and was plotting a demonstration, I'd need to hide that info. Or bank heist details.
Currently, encryption is used freestanding by people with something to hide - and is viewed by 'the masses' as a terrorist/theft/dishonest tool. Why isn't encryption used in *everything*? I appreciate the need for encryption, but until it is everywhere and easy to use, it will have a black cloud hanging over it. Which makes it much easier for those who would like to abuse their powers (cough *Ash*cough) to pass laws restricting the use. Thereby reinforcing its reputation as a tool for people who have something (bad, ohohoh very bad) to hide.
steganography isn't secure at all (Score:3, Interesting)
Its a twofold problem as I see it.
1. The hiding of encrypted data/images/text/whatever inside of an image file is based on the notion that security through obscurity raises the bar. Anyone who studies security knows that this is just not true. Since suspicious images are simple to detect, this layer of obscurity offers no real data protection than just encrypting the file and naming it "this-is-secure-data.blowfish". Its just a matter of what encryption method is used to secure the contents. Which brings me to my second point.
2. Since the basis of steganography is to hide information inside an image without disturbing the visual image, the size of the data contained within, from my understanding, is severely constrained. Thereby limiting the effectiveness of this technique in all but very large, suspicious, and still easily scanned images.
SO, by hiding one's data inside an image with this technique, one is left with a picture of a table that is just screaming to be scanned for its suspicious content.
In BSD (Score:3, Interesting)
What I'd like to see (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Example: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Example: (Score:2)
Re:Here's the best reason (Score:2, Funny)
Here's the link [xs4all.nl]
Re: (Score:2)