I get interested in the wierdest things. I think that when I was a boy I got interested in sending secret messages, writing in code. I mean, who hasn’t used milk as invisible ink to write a message to a buddy, or at least tried it in science class to make sure it works.
Well, this is an Debian i386 ELF binary (read Linux). The source is available here. The plug-in enables the Gimp to do steganaography. Well, “What the hell is steganography?” you may be asking youself…
Steganography:\Steg`a*nog”ra*phy\, n. [Gr. ? covered (fr. ? to cover closely) + -graphy.] Hiding a secret message within a larger one in such a way that others can not discern the presence or contents of the hidden message. For example, a message might be hidden within an image by changing the least significant bits to be the message bits.This is a fairly new way to do steganography. Some of the earliest examples of steganography date back to the Greeks. A master would shave a slave’s head, tattoo the secret message on the servant’s scalp and wait for the hair to grow back. Once his coif had grown back enough to hide the message, he was sent on his way to transfer the message, only to have his noggin shaved again so the recipient could read it.
Steganography is basically a way to hide messages in plain view where nobody is looking for it. For example, if you were to click on the image at the head of this post, you could download a rather lovely wallpaper that contains the entirety of one of Douglas Adams excellent books.
So, if you’re curious, you have the Gimp installed and either an Intel Linux box, or at least gcc for your platform, you should try this out for fun. Steganography plug-ins for your imaging software is my idea of fun, I need to develop new hobbies.
Posted by Philip McClure in Linux on July 14, 2003