Steganography
All of us have some private data that we wish shouldn't be viewed by others.Even though we protect by making data invisible or locking with some softwares (we can lock without softwares too), our data is not entirely secure. Reason is, there are also softwares for cracking the passwords and some tricks by using which we can view the hidden data.Recently,I happened to come across this practical application of this technique , i knew it from long time but never could implement it. Now this technique makes it even easier to hide your files.
So what we need is some sought of a technique where only the author of the data knows how to view the data and for others some thing else sholud be displayed.This is known as Steganography.
STEGANOGRAPHY is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one apart from the sender and intended recipient even realizes there is a hidden message.Want more then Click Here.
Here is an example.I'm going to show how we can hide files within a image file.
1)First,make an archieve of the files you want to hide.(you require file compression softwares like Winrar or Winzip)
2)Let the name of the archieve be "sms.rar".
3)Select an image file say "Img38. gif".
4)Make sure that both the files("sms.rar" and "Img38.gif") are in same directory.Say in C:\ Drive.
5)Now,go to Start>Run>cmd and in command prompt go to "C:\" drive.
(for this just type "cd \" and hit enter).
6)Type "copy /b img38.gif+sms.rar new.jpg" (without quotes & its case-insensitive & take care of the file extension).
That's it,now go to C:\ drive in My Computer and you will see a image file named "new.jpg".If you open it new.jpg will be opened but with increased size.
To View the files, right-click on "new.jpg">>open with>>choose program>>select Winrar Archive.
Explanation:Here the copy command merges the 2 files in binary mode.It doesn't even corrupt the encoded image file.
This is just a small presentation of a powerful technology,there are even more complex techniques which help you to achieve more security and hide your files.
Hope you will find this post pretty useful as it is an effective approach to prevent those snooping in your PC.If you liked it plz do comment on it.Thanks.
