Nearly a year ago I posted an article on how to hide MP3 audio inside GIF picture. It’s a very cool trick but I believe that terrorist must have used this method to convey messages across the world. I just found out that it is possible to hide TEXT messages in any images file. It can be encrypted and the text can’t be viewed easily. Hiding text in images is called Steganography is NOT something new. There are freewares that is capable of doing this and the release date is year 2005. Looks like I am a little outdated to know this technique! Continue reading if you’re interested to know how to hide text messages in images.
If you search in Google on “Hide Messages in Images”, you’ll find a lot of program that can do this. Some are shareware and some are freeware. I’ve tested a few freewares and only 1 of it works fine in hiding messages inside images.
ImageHide is the one that gives me no problem in hiding text messages inside any image file.
Surprisingly ImageHide last update was on 04-July-2005 and it still works! You’re able to load .cut, .pcd, .pic, .cel, .pbm, pgm, .ppm, .pdd, .psd, .bw, .rgb, .rgba, .sgi, .rla, .rpf, .scr, .pcc, .pcx, .eps, .fax, .tif, .tiff, .ivb, .tga, .vda, .vst, .win, .dib, .rle, .jpeg, .jpe, .jpg, .jfif, .emf, .wmf, .ico, .bmp, .png. I bet you don’t even know half of the extension! Although you can load many types of image files, but you can only save it in .BMP or .PNG after you’ve entered the text.
It’s very easy to hide text messages in images by using ImageHide. First, load any image you want. At the bottom of ImageHide, you can type your secret text. Once you’ve done that, click on “Write Data button” to insert the text message into your image. Finally, click on Save Image button to save your image in either BMP or PNG format.
To read the hidden text message, click the Load Image button. If there is text embedded into that image, it’ll show the ImageHide version you’ve used to embed the text message, whether it’s encrypted or not and also the data size.
If you want extra security, you can use the Encryption. Just click on the Encrypt button before you Write Data. It’ll prompt you to enter a password to encrypt it. After you type in a password, you’ll see that the text that you want to hide becomes random letters and numbers. So if someone knows that you use ImageHide, they still can’t simply read the hidden text message without the password.
The image file size is much smaller if you hide text message instead of hide mp3. If a normal image with small scale has big file size, it can be suspicious. I tried inserting a text “This is a Hidden Message – Raymond.CC” into a PNG image file, surprisingly the file size is 2kb smaller than the original image file.
Hiding text messages in images is NOT only for terrorist use. If you’re a graphic designer and someone used your images without your permission, you can sue them by having this very good proof. The person who ripped your images will have nothing to say if the image he has on his computer or website has hidden text that you placed.
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