When you have sensitive or personal information stored on your PC, it is imperative that this is securely protected in some way. This is usually achieved by password protecting and encrypting these files so nobody but you can access them with the correct password.
The problem with this is that unscrupulous people who want to access your private information still know that something is stored inside the encrypted files. Another and perhaps even more interesting method is having your data hidden away so nobody even knows it is there in the first place. If another person can’t see and doesn’t even know you might have a file containing all your passwords sitting there ‘hiding in plain sight’, how are they going to do anything about it?
To paraphrase from Wikipedia, Steganography is; “the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message, a form of security through obscurity.” This type of security has been around for hundreds of years and in the digital world for a few decades. Something like this is probably as relevant now as it’s ever been because of the sheer amount of confidential information people have scattered across their digital devices and online.
Encrypting a file is good, encrypting it and hiding it inside another file such as a picture or executable is even better. Anybody can open the photo or run the executable and it will behave like you would expect it to. The only time a person can even suspect there is other information stored in these files is if you go a bit crazy and do something like adding a 20MB file to a tiny 50K JPEG.
Our Secret is a Windows utility that will handle the task of allowing you to hide one, or a number of files or simple text messages inside another file while also giving the option to password protect the data as well. The program is very easy to use and breaks down the process into a simple series of steps to hide or unhide. Although only an installable version is available, the program itself is only a single executable which can be extracted with Universal Extractor. An ini file will be created in the executables location.
The main window is split into two halves, one for hiding and encrypting and the other to reverse the procedure.
To hide something in a file:
1. Open the requester and select a file to act as the ‘carrier’. I have tried this using a number of image and music formats as well as executables, office documents and archives including 7Zip and Zip. All opened themselves successfully and hid the files and messages attached to them. The only type of file it doesn’t really work on is text based files like txt, ini, Html etc.
2. Click the ‘Add’ button where you can either select any file to be hidden or enter a text message by entering a subject and typing your message in the box. The number of messages or files that can be added appears to be unlimited although you don’t want the carrier file to appear ridiculously large for what it is. Adding big files to a tiny original carrier file is much more likely to arouse suspicion.
3. Simply enter your chosen password twice if you want to add one and press ‘Hide’. After selecting the output filename, the job is done. The file can then be executed or viewed as normal, the only difference will be a larger file than before. Do bear in mind that if you choose to edit the carrier file such as a document or image, for obvious reasons the piggybacked data will be lost.
1. Open the requester and select a file to act as the ‘carrier’. I have tried this using a number of image and music formats as well as executables, office documents and archives including 7Zip and Zip. All opened themselves successfully and hid the files and messages attached to them. The only type of file it doesn’t really work on is text based files like txt, ini, Html etc.
2. Click the ‘Add’ button where you can either select any file to be hidden or enter a text message by entering a subject and typing your message in the box. The number of messages or files that can be added appears to be unlimited although you don’t want the carrier file to appear ridiculously large for what it is. Adding big files to a tiny original carrier file is much more likely to arouse suspicion.
3. Simply enter your chosen password twice if you want to add one and press ‘Hide’. After selecting the output filename, the job is done. The file can then be executed or viewed as normal, the only difference will be a larger file than before. Do bear in mind that if you choose to edit the carrier file such as a document or image, for obvious reasons the piggybacked data will be lost.
To unhide the data again, you or the person you’re sending the file to will need to use this program to get it back.
1. Point to the carrier file which was created during the hide process.
2. If you originally used password encryption to hide the data, enter this to unhide it.
3. Click the ‘Unhide’ button. Any hidden files or messages will show in the window and double clicking on them will allow each one to be saved.
1. Point to the carrier file which was created during the hide process.
2. If you originally used password encryption to hide the data, enter this to unhide it.
3. Click the ‘Unhide’ button. Any hidden files or messages will show in the window and double clicking on them will allow each one to be saved.
Having a look at the output file with a hex editor shows there is simply a number of unreadable characters tagged on the end of the file. Even if someone knew it was there, they would still have to try and decrypt it or know the password to reveal the information. But if you don’t tell anyone what you have done and it’s not blatantly obvious with the files size, who’s going to know? The whole process is incredibly simple but if used sensibly can prove to be a very powerful way of adding an extra layer of protection to your most valuable data and sensitive information. A very useful utility to encrypt and hide files as well for that extra piece of mind.
Compatible with Windows XP, Vista and 7 32 and 64bit
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