Explore The Technique To Hide File(s) In Image File

 

The technique of hiding a file in an image file is broadly referred to as ‘Steganography’.  This technique is the art of protecting sensitive files or the information in files from unintended or unauthorized audiences. By hiding a file in an image file, it can be transferred over the internet or on electronic media with ease without the fear of being accessed by the third party. This method of data hiding proves to be useful when encryption is not permitted. It can be said that hiding file(s) in image file is a supplement for encryption. An encrypted file can still be hidden in an image file so that even if the encrypted file gets deciphered, the hidden information cannot be accessed.

How To Hide Data Files In Images?

Any type of file including txt, exe, avi, mp3, etc. can be hidden in an image file. Also, you can store multiple files inside a single JPG image file. A pre-requisite of this technique is that you need to have either WinZip or WinRAR installed on your computer system.

You can hide file(s) in image file with ease by following the given steps:

1. Firstly create a folder on the hard drive and save all the files that you wish to hide in that folder. Also, save the image file that you require to hide the file into in that folder.
2. Select all the files needed to be hidden and right click on them. Then select the option to add them to a compressed ZIP or RAR file.
3. Next, copy and paste both the image file and the files intended to be hidden, onto the desktop.
4. Open cmd by following the path Start> Accessories> Command Prompt. Now, type the following command: cd desktop. Here, cd stands for change directory. You can change your directory to desktop by using this command.
5. Next, type the command: Copy/b imagename.jpg + filename.rar finalimage.jpg.
   • Replace the imagename.jpg with the name of the image, along with the extension, that is needed to hide the file(s) into.
   • Also, replace the filename with the name of the file that you intend to hide. It must be in the .rar format.
   • Replace finalimage.jpg with a desired name that you want to give to the resultant file hiding image.
6. Now when you try opening this resultant newly created image file, it will open in the same way a normal image would. However, in order to open and access the hidden file, the below discussed method should be followed.

How To Access The Hidden Files?

There are two ways in which you can open or access the hidden files from the newly created file hiding JPG image. One method is to simply change the file extension of that image to .rar and open the file(s) with WinRAR. The other method is to right click on the JPG image and open it with WinRAR. You can easily have your hidden files shown up in either way, which can further be extracted.