Hiding Files in Pictures

[whitey6993]

This is a tutorial of sorts that covers a cool method of hiding things on your computer. Windows is required to follow this tutorial coherently, but you could also use another operating system as long as the commands perform the same actions. I was going to post this tutorial in the "tutorials" section of the site, but since it doesn't have anything to do with programming, it belongs here.

We all have files that we don't want just any ol' person to look at on our computers. Whether it's your pin number, your locker com, or even your personal diary, there is usually something you want to keep secret. There are several ways that you can hide sensitive information, and many are highly effective such as encryption etc. There is a really cool way to hide information however, that requires nothing more than an image, a compressed file, and a little knowledge of the command prompt in Windows. So without further ado, lets begin.

Lets say you have some information in a notepad document (or any type of file actually) that you don't want your nosy friend to dig up. Maybe it's your safe combination for example:

Safe combination: 1-2-3

Well, there is an easy way to hide this information from your friend right under their nose! First, you will need to open up an image. If you don't have one on hand, I have one for you to download in this post. Now that you have your image, move all of the stuff that you want to hide into a .zip folder. For example, I have a file named safe.txt on my desktop. To move it into a .zip folder, I right click, and when the menu pops up, I click send to Compressed (.zip) folder.

Now that you have all of the ground-work laid out, it's time for a little command prompt magic. We are going to use the CMD copy command to copy the zipped up file into your image. For me, this command looked like this:

copy C:\users\whitey\desktop\blue.jpg + C:\users\whitey\desktop\safe.zip C:\users\whitey\desktop\blue.jpg

For your system, the generic version of the command is the following:

copy "FullPathOfYourImage" + "FullPathOfYourZipFile" "FullPathOfYourImage"

There can be no spaces in either file name. If you have spaces, either re-name your files, or use quotes around the path names. Once you perform the copy statement, your information will be appended to the end of your image. Now, if your nosy friend looks through your stuff, they will just see images instead of secret documents.

Now, you might be thinking, "Great! My friend can't look at my stuff anymore. But wait, what if I want to look at my stuff again?" Well fear not! This is why we put the information into a compressed file instead of just appending it. Simply open up 7zip (or any other comparable program) and extract the file from the image. Your uncompressed information will show up right next to the image.

Afterword
This method of hiding files is by no means secure. It is just a cool little trick that I thought I would post here for any interested people. You theoretically should be able to perform this operation on any operating system with a console that has a copy program installed. I am not sure if this will work with other types of compressed files (for example .7z files) but it should. Also, I have attached an image for you to hide stuff in (hidingart.jpg) if you don't already have an image. If anyone would like to offer corrections or add to the information presented here, please post a reply! Thank you!

[brokenbylaw]

Hey bro... I'm sure this is in the wrong place AND shouldn't you specify binary data E.G

copy C:\users\whitey\desktop\blue.jpg + C:\users\whitey\desktop\safe.zip C:\users\whitey\desktop\blue.jpg /B

and verify it has been written correctly for a fools sake

i would use

copy C:\users\whitey\desktop\blue.jpg + C:\users\whitey\desktop\safe.zip C:\users\whitey\desktop\blue.jpg /B /V

EDIT:: correct me if I'm wrong about the placement (I'm new, but I'm thinking Tutorials?)