STEGSNOW
Hide vital information
Shashank Sharma is a man of many hidden talents. Too bad he’s forgotten the passphrase to unlock them all.
OUR EXPERT
Shashank Sharma
is a trial lawyer in New Delhi and an avid Arch user. He’s been writing about open source software for 20 years and lawyering for 10.
There’s something infinitely intriguing about hiding messages in plain sight. The idea has spawned an entire field called steganography, hiding messages or information in another object. In modern day computing, steganography often involves hiding a message or an image inside another image or audio/video file. However, it’s also possible to hide message in ASCII text files.
Released under the Apache 2.0 Licence, Stegsnow uses whitespace to conceal messages. It does so by appending whitespace to the end of a line. The tool’s author suggests that locating trailing whitespace in text files is like finding a polar bear in a snowstorm. This also explains the name of the utility as it exploits the Steganographic Nature of Whitespace (SNOW).
When you encode a message in a text file, the original file remains unchanged and Stegsnow creates an identical file with the same text as the original, along with the hidden message. When you open this new file in a text editor, you only see the text of the original file. You must run the new file through Stegsnow to view the hidden message.