Digital Inspiration has a pretty cool post that walks you through how to hide documents, such as a text file or Excel spreadsheet, in an image file. If someone tries to open the image they won’t notice anything different because they will see an un-distorted picture that appears to be normal (except maybe for the file size).
The main thing that you need to do is use the following text at the command prompt:
copy /b imagename.jpg + documentname.xls generatedimage.jpg
That code is assuming that the files being used are located at the root of your drive. To “recover” the document you just need to change the extension back to the original file type.
This almost reminds me of those book safes (pictured above) because it may not be the easiest thing to find but once you do find it the contents are easy to get.
I made a test with a PDF file. Was succesfully hidden in the JPEG file (meaning, after renaming to PDF, the file did open). I made a test with a DOC file. Did not work (after renaming the generated file, this could not be open by MS Office). I made a test with a MP3 file. Almost work (after renaming, the file could be play with WinAmp, but not with MediaMonkey or BSPlayer, while the original could be played). I don’t know what it works for others.
So, don’t rely on this method untill you check that the file-to-be-hidden can be extracted from the generated file.
I had a program ages ago that hide files within other files. It was called…..”camouflage” I think. Some freeware or something. It worked, as it completely hid a file within another file, and you could use another copy of camouflage to open the file.
Here it is:
[camouflage.unfiction.com]
more stable that a command line :p
When you use command line
you actually make a file, which contains File1 data File2 data.
It is up to document reading program, will it read such file, or not. Only few programs are clever enough, to skip the JPEG data and find the place (inside the file), where document data begins. It is NOT a normal behavior, if program does that tricks, so there is no guarantee, that the file will be readable. (You have to check first)
Most programs will just sniff the file beginning (where JPEG data starts), and say “Aha! This is not my document! I will not work with this!”
So, use this at your own risk
Always check, if the file is readable after such transformation.
Actually I think that was the program I was thinking about. I just couldn’t remember the name. Thanks!