Literally Hide Sensitive Files In A Picture

How many readers out there have ever heard of steganography?

Steganography is not a type of dinosaur: but is a form of security through obscurity. Steganography is often used in the tech world as an obscure way of  storing a file (or files) inside another file such as a picture. As a result, anyone looking at the picture has no idea the sensitive file exists. Mix this concept with encryption and you have very secure method to hide (and secure) sensitive files. The picture appears as it should appear, opens on the computer just like any other picture; and, the only clue given (to the trained eye) that something may be out of the ordinary is that the file size of the picture will appear larger due to the sensitive file being contained within. Pretty neat stuff if you think about it…

So how can you take advantage of steganography?

What got me going on this, is an article posted at I Love Free Software [click here] about a FREE steganography program called Our Secret. It is programs like Our Secret that incites me to find clever ways to use it. I encourage you to read the article at I Love Free Software — Hide files and Messages Inside Images with Our Secret – to get a more detailed walkthrough on using the program.

First off, Our Secret is pretty easy to use and I encourage you to give it a try. Straight from the horses mouth, Our Secret is this:

Our Secret enables you to hide and encrypt files within other files (called carrier files) such as pictures or sound files. This allows you to encrypt sensitive information, while at the same time hiding it in a file that will not look suspicious, so nobody even knows that there is any encrypted information. Typically Our Secret is a three to four step process (depending if you use a password).

Just select the desired ‘carrier file’ (which will hide the information), select what kind of information you want to hide, create a password, and push the ‘hide’ button. After you save the new file, you can erase the one you wanted to hide. The unhide process goes in the same way but vice versa.

One clever way that I found to use Our Secret was this…  I took three documents, used Our Secret to hide the three documents inside a picture. I then uploaded the picture to my box.com account and stored it in my pictures folder. Online, the picture opened just like any other picture; however, encapsulated inside that picture is my hidden document files.

Note: One thing I did not notice is that there is not a portable version of Our Secret which would really make this program handy; however, I did manage to break the program install down with Universal Extractor so that I can carry it on my flash drive. I do need to experiment further to see if this program writes to the registry to determine if it truly can be used as a portable app or not.

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GEEK BONUS AREA

Today’s Technology News, Software, Apps,
Wallpapers, and MORE… 5/9/12

To Much Time Online?

Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse

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Protecting sensitive files on your portable flash drive…

Carrying files on a flash drive is an easy method of transporting files to and from the office; BUT, did you ever stop and think; what the consequences would be if you lost the drive. Would you be exposing sensitive files and data to someone that found the drive that ultimately could come back to haunt you? Portable flash drives are small and can very easily lost or misplaced.

There are numerous methods available to encrypt files but most of the those methods can be time consuming, still can expose or give hints to the nature of the file data, and in most instances cannot be fully used on other PC’s due to limited access rights. As always, prior to transporting data to/from your home PC to another site (e.g. work), make sure you have permission to do so (e.g. consult with your network administrator).

I have experimented with many software utilities that will encrypt data on a drive to deter and prevent exposure of the data. If you do not know what encryption is, do not let the term scare you.

encryption is the process of transforming information (referred to as plaintext) using an algorithm (called cipher) to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. [ source: WikiPedia ]

An utility that I recently started to use and have been quite impressed with is called “FREE SafeHouse Explorer”.  FREE Safehouse Explorer is a FREE (never expires) product that is offered by a company called PCDynamics, Inc. to promote their other commercial products and to promote the importance of data privacy.

FREE SafeHouse Explorer is initially installed on your PC, BUT there is a menu option in SafeHouse to copy the program to your flash drive or any external media. Once on your flash drive you will be prompted to create a volume storage area.  The volume storage area can be any size up to 2000 Gigabytes… In my case I have an 8 Gig flash drive and I created a 2 Gig volume area to store my sensitive files. Once your volume has been created, the actual program on the flash drive, called “SafeHouse Explorer” is the program that you use to move, copy, and delete files in the protected volume; thus, it makes no difference if you have administrative access rights on the PC or not. Basically, in summary, the  files that you intend on protecting are hidden inside this volume file that gives no hint of what the data may or could be. You can also backup these volume files; and to open them, you only need the “SafeHouse Explorer” program.  SafeHouse Explorer is very similar to Windows Explorer in appearance and operation. There are many features to this program, requires a minimal learning curve, and in the end I feel comfortable with the protection if offers in the event my drive is lost or stolen.

SafeHouse Explorer In Action

Main Features:

SafeHouse Explorer makes your secret files invisible and hides them from snoopers, intruders and anyone else who doesn’t have your permission to view them.

SafeHouse Explorer uses passwords and maximum-strength 256-bit advanced encryption to completely hide and defend your sensitive files, including photos, videos, spreadsheets, databases and just about any other kind of file that you might have.

SafeHouse Explorer can protect files residing on any drive, including memory sticks, external USB drives, network servers, CD/DVDs and even iPods. Supports U3 Smart Drives.

SafeHouse Explorer creates hidden private storage areas on your local hard drive or external media to hold your confidential files. Your files are completely invisible until you enter your password. After you enter your secret password, you access your files using SafeHouse Explorer’s familiar drag-and-drop Explorer-like interface.

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