User Guides A gr8 Method to secure ur files ;) This time in a PICTURE

Well, did you know you could hide your files in a JPEG file? For this, you will only need to download WinRAR. You just need to have a little knowledge about Command Prompt and have WinRAR installed.

Ok, lets begin…

1. Gather all the files that you wish to hide in a folder anywhere in your PC (make it in C:\hidden - RECOMMENDED).
2. Now, add those files in a RAR archive (e.g. secret.rar). This file should also be in the same directory (C:\hidden).
3. Now, look for a simple JPEG picture file (e.g. logo.jpg). Copy/Paste that file also in C:\hidden.
4. Now, open Command Prompt (Go to Run and type ‘cmd‘). Make your working directory C:\hidden.
5. Now type: “COPY /b logo.jpg + secret.rar output.jpg†(without quotes) - Now, logo.jpg is the picture you want to show, secret.rar is the file to be hidden, and output.jpg is the file which contains both. :D
6. Now, after you have done this, you will see a file output.jpg in C:\hidden. Open it (double-click) and it will show the picture you wanted to show. Now try opening the same file with WinRAR, it will show the hidden archive .

Done! :D
plz do reply
 
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I had made a file security tool in VB during my college days and it was based on a similar thing. So heres an explanation of how this works,

Every image type has a specific format with data structures and the header structure has information on how to read the image data. The application which reads the image file will read the data according to the header information and even if we append some extra data at the end, the file will stiil be readable by the application as long as the image data structures are intact. since the headers will specify how much data to read, it will just ignore the extra data at the end. Now we can append what ever data we want at the end and the image would still be intact.

One can also store information in the image data itself. This process is called stegenography. The advantage is that the file size of the image will not increase. The downside is that you are limited in the amount of data you can put by the size of the image. a very simple form of this process is to use the last bit of each color byte to the data you want to put. in a 24bit color image, you can embedd 3 bits in every pixel. Suppose you have a bitmap of size 1024 x 768, you can embedd 288KB of data without increasing the file size.
 
That explains how some applications give comments to JPEG files internally. Back in the old days of DOS(some 12 yrs ago) I used to join text files with this type of COPY command.
Btw, doesn't WinRAR detect the additional JPEG data in the file header as trash and flag the archive integrity as violated?
 
i was abt to post this thing ... bt there were some cases which arose.. like u had to make sure abt the file sizes.. so held it back ..

Bt nice to see sm1 else too interested on similar lines..
 
Well, I've been using a different method for long to hide files, in alternate data streams, the constraints are the file system where the file is kept should be NTFS. What you can do it add any file to any other file, as additional information, no limit on file siz or anything else.

The advantage of this thing is that the file size does not increase, the extra data is not added in the file size. for example I have a 10kb file, and want to hide a 1Gb file in it, after I hide, the file size will still be shown 10kb, though quite obviously when u clock on the partition to see total free space, 1Gb is gone.
 
^^^ Amazing find , thanks for the info :)

@kniwor : ur right with the space thingy , ppl would often wonder looking at a pic why the hell is a pic so big....but then the space doesnt increase so its cool....but then i assume deleting the pic also goes ahead and deleted the entire hidden info with it ?
 
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