steganography
Security and privacy
steganography
SHOW HN2022
208points
85comments
#271of 2,570 in 2022
Top 11%of 2022 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
6 positive, 30 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 9 critical, out of 45 comments about the project. Thread score -0.05.
Idea: 4 for, 4 againstPrivacy: 2 for, 4 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Fun steganography idea and nice tool
From 3 comments
Nice tool. As semi-related trivia, Pico-8 stores its "cartridges" using this technique so the carts are .PNG files. https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
gernb on HNI love this kind of stuff, if I ever would use security by obscurity this is probably the way I would do it :)
commitpizza on HNNice work! Steganography is always one of the topics I introduce at the end of CS1, since they've learned all the bits and pieces on how to do it. Its fun to watch their minds…
tsumnia on HN
Objections
LSB method is well known and statistically detectable
From 3 comments
This is really cool. However, LSB is the most famous method of doing steno, so if you actually have something to hide this is probably not a good method, as everyone knows about…
bawolff on HNThe LSBs of a typical photograph are not uniformly random. For example, here's the blue channel LSBs of the input image from the repo: https://i.imgur.com/lOVlcpU.png If they are…
Retr0id on HNThe steganography aspect does not seam very robust. It significantly alters the distribution of LSB of pixel values of typical images. In contrast steghide[1] encodes the data by…
leni536 on HN
Recompression by social platforms would destroy hidden data
From 3 comments
What happens if you send a photo generated by this tool through something like Facebook or WhatsApp where they might re-encode the file to save on storage/bandwidth costs?
herpderperator on HNThe concept is lossless vs lossy compressions. Facebook is known to do all manner of lossy transformations on images, while whatsapp likely (definitely if you believe it is e2e…
hayst4ck on HNThis form of steganography, of course, can't survive virtually every image transformation and format conversion and thus can only be used for limited cases. PICO-8's .p8.png…
lifthrasiir on HN
Requests
Use a more robust method such as steghide-style pixel swapping
From 1 comment
The steganography aspect does not seam very robust. It significantly alters the distribution of LSB of pixel values of typical images. In contrast steghide[1] encodes the data by…
leni536 on HN
Support for building on more platforms
From 2 comments
Getting errors when building it on my machine, macOS 12.5, Intel.
jamesy0ung on HNHow do you install this?
chirau on HN
Questions
How to detect whether an image contains hidden data
From 1 comment
The author claims it is possible to detect an image having some possible data. How does one detect this?
nuraxy on HN
What happens when images pass through Facebook or WhatsApp
From 1 comment
What happens if you send a photo generated by this tool through something like Facebook or WhatsApp where they might re-encode the file to save on storage/bandwidth costs?
herpderperator on HN
Alternatives named
steghide
From 2 comments
The steganography aspect does not seam very robust. It significantly alters the distribution of LSB of pixel values of typical images. In contrast steghide[1] encodes the data by…
leni536 on HNThat's just about "hiding" being a relative word. "ZIP thing" also can be considered hiding, if you are absolutely clueless. And if we speak about "forensics" — that toy…
krick on HN
Pico-8 PNG cartridges
From 2 comments
Nice tool. As semi-related trivia, Pico-8 stores its "cartridges" using this technique so the carts are .PNG files. https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
gernb on HNThis form of steganography, of course, can't survive virtually every image transformation and format conversion and thus can only be used for limited cases. PICO-8's .p8.png…
lifthrasiir on HN
VeraCrypt hidden volumes
From 1 comment
Sounds a bit like the hidden volumes in TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt...
ale42 on HN