Hide Seek

HideSeek v5.0 a steganography program for the pc Welcome to HideSeek v5.0. This is a radical update to hideseek v4.1 which includes a lot of new features. First, there is an interface....no more command line. In fact, you can no longer run hideseek from the command line at all. Second, and more importantly, hideseek now works with a lot more display resolutions that 320X480. Hopefully, this will make it a lot more usefull. To begin, what is steganography? steganography is the hiding of data in other data. More on this later. To run hideseek, just type "hideseek" at the c> prompt and away you go. hideseek is a dos program. i don't know what will happen if you try to run it under windows--i never have. Once in hideseek, you are presented with the main screen. You may use the mouse (if you have one) to click in any double-bordered box or on any button, or just type a highlighted letter to select an option. The options are: Gif file: select the gif file to use for both hiding and seeking data. If you are hiding, you will eventually be asked for a name for the output gif file. GREYSCALE GIFS WORK BEST FOR HIDING Data file: select the data file. This file will either be hidden, if you choose to hide data, or will be the name of the output file if you are seeking data. Note that it must be empty if it is to be an output file. Key : input a key to lock data in the file. This key encrypts the header hideseek uses with the IDEA algorithm, although it does NOT encrypt the data at all. This function is usefull if you want to make it hard for people to get your data out....no key, no seek. to use NO KEY click the No Key radio button. this will clear the key for you. if this button is not selected you are using a key wether you see one or not!!! it will also say "(none)" in the key box if you are not using a key (or if your key is "(none)"--you know who you are). notice that the key box will blink after you hide data, to remind you of having used a key. you can get rid of this blinking by pressing No Key or entering a new key. No Key : clears the key and the key input box. this is a radio button and will automatically clear if you enter a key....if the button is not selected, you have a key. see above. Browse : takes you to a file browsing screen documented later. View : shows you the gif file you have selected. Read : shows you the data file you have selected. Quit : quits the program. Hide : hides the data file in the gif file. asks for a name for an output gif file.

Seek

: looks for data in the gif file and writes it to the data file....the data file must be empty.

The browse screen has a bunch of functions for looking through your directories for files: The File box lets you enter a file path and name. You can use it to change disk and directory and select a file mask or select a file. the Directory box lets you look through your direcory tree. You may press ESCAPE to leave the box without making a choice. the drive box lets you change drives. the mask buttons let you select a file mask, which will affect what the directory display shows. the "load/view as" selector lets you decide to load or view a given file as a Gif or a Data file. the View button shows you the file you have selected. the button is sensitive to the load/view As button the Load button loads the file and returns you to the main screen the Quit button returns you to the main screen without loading any file. that's it! error messages should be pretty self-explanatory. One thing to watch out for: if it tells you it cannot display your gif file, it is because hideseek does not support your video card at the required resolution. It may suggest that you resize the gif (using a separate program) and try again. if there is data hidden in the file DO NOT RESIZE IT!!!! the data would be lost. HideSeek can be pretty slow for large gif and/or data files. patient. I apologize for the slowness.

Please be

HideSeek will make an output gif (if you are hiding) that matches the DISPLAY size, not the original GIF size. annoying, but that's life (more specifically that's the fastgraph graphics toolbox.) note that because of this the WHOLE display including the black area around your gif gets used in the hiding process and IS a part of the new gif....DO NOT RESIZE!!!!) -------------------------------------------------------------------------steganography works, in this case, by making subtle, reversible alterations in the gif file. Basically, it takes the low-order bit of each pixel and uses it to encode 1 bit of a character. Thus, 8 pixels can encode 1 character. This creates noticeable "noise" in the picture UNLESS YOU USE A GREYSCALE GIF, in which case there is no noise, due to the way the greyscale palette works. Carefull analysis of a gif MIGHT be able to detect that there is hidden data, but it may not. depends on the gif. FOR HIDESEEK TO BE REALLY USEFULL, YOU _MUST_ USE GREYSCALE GIFS. gifs are just too obvious.

color

HideSeek tries to be more secure by using a pseudo-random number generator to "disperse" the data throughout the GIF....thus, not all pixels contain data. It is impossible to tell which pixels do contain data, thus rendering hidden data very secure. HideSeek needs to remember the file size and the seed for the PRNG in order to carry this out succesfully. Thus, it writes

a header to the GIF file first thing. Since this is not being very sneaky, it encodes the header, using the IDEA algorithm, and a key you supply, or can supply, if you want to. This makes the data very hard to extract. there are literally billions of possible files in any given GIF, and millions of possible keys to try and guess. Actually, there are only 32,000 possible seeds to try and guess, making that the weak link in the chain. But, without the key you don't know the file length, and if someone were so sneaky and devious as to hide ENCRYPTED DATA, well, there's no telling whether what you pull out is just junk or a real secret file. I have included IDEA.EXE, a simple encryption program for use in doing just this. It is not the best possible program, but it is adequate. See the idea.doc file for more info. --------------------------------------------------------------------------test your program on secret.gif. secret.gif has a copy of idea.zip, a simple encryption program, hidden in it using no key. if you can get out a .zip file that unzips to an encryption program, all is well. --------------------------------------------------------------------------hideseek 5.0 is completely backwards compatible with HideSeek 3.5 and later. files hidden with these earlier version can be extracted with this version, but not, of course, vice versa. hideseek is freeware. have a nice day. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The IDEA(tm) conventional block cipher used by HIDESEEK and IDEA is covered by a patent in Europe, held by ETH and a Swiss company called Ascom-Tech AG. The patent number is PCT/CH91/00117. International patents are pending. IDEA(tm) is a trademark of Ascom-Tech AG. There is no license fee required for noncommercial use of IDEA. You may not extract the IDEA cipher from HIDESEEK or IDEA.EXE and put it in another commercial product without a license. Commercial users of IDEA may obtain licensing details from Dieter Profos, Ascom Tech AG, Solothurn Lab, Postfach 151, 4502 Solothurn, Switzerland, Tel +41 65 242885, Fax +41 65 235761. The GIF format is copyrighted by compuserve. HIDESEEK and IDEA are freeware and i am an amateur. they are tested as well as i have been able to test them, are as safe as i can make them, and i am confident that they are robust. NEVERTHELESS, you may only use them at your own risk. i cannot and will not be responsible for lost data. ============================================================================= ============================================================================ the October BBS (212-529-3297) has agreed to be a distribution point for HideSeek. Look for upgrades there as well as other cool stuff. on the internet, HideSeek is distributed by anonymous ftp at ftp.netcom.com in /pub/qwerty/Steganography

============================================================================ i am [email protected] if you want or need to contact me. -----remember: when cryptography is illegal, only 9*7^Py.> *8D7awQs ��9Ikj;