Simple Image Steganography

While there are various ways to share data without risking interception, steganography tools appeal to users, since they allow data or secret messages to be concealed inside images.

As its name suggests, Simple Image Steganography provides a way for you to hide a large amount of data inside a plain image file. Released under an open-source license, this application focuses on the size of the hidden data rather than security and detection, as described below.

There are two editions available, one of which is portable. This means you can choose an install-free edition that leaves no traces on the host computer and can be used on the go, directly from a removable device.

The first step in hiding data inside an image is choosing the input file, e.g. the binary data file that must be hidden in the carrier image.

For additional protection and security, you must create an encryption password required upon unveiling the hidden file. Moving on, the application requires you to browse for the input image.

There are a few additional settings to go through.

Simple Image Steganography allows you to select the resolution of the output image, which can be automatically adjusted to fit the data size. The compression level can be adjusted as well.

Probably the option you should be the most careful about is choosing the color component to replace. Simple Image Steganography can hide a larger amount of data by replacing an entire color component in the target image, which makes the resulting image grainy.

For the steganography to pass unnoticed, you should carefully choose the weakest color component, the one that would not make the image change too obviously. To this extent, Simple Image Steganography might be less efficient than other similar applications.

Originally a web application, the compiled version of Simple Image Steganography works as a regular desktop app, fulfilling the exact same “mission”: hiding larger amounts of data inside an image file. However, since it replaces a color component in the image, the steganography operation might be detected easier.