Steganography comes to the Mac. Steganography?
steganography |ˌstegəˈnägrəfi| noun
the practice of concealing messages or information within other nonsecret text or data.
Steganography is a way to conceal a message, image, or file within another message, image, or file. In this case it’s the free Mac app Outguess which does the deed- hide a document inside a photo. James Bond would be impressed.
Using Outguess is rather straightforward. Select a photo (it’s called a ‘container‘ and needs to be a common JPG file). Select the file or document to hide (it’s called ‘content‘). Type in a key (like a password). Click the Hide Data button.
That’s it.
Outguess creates a new image or photo but with the file or document secretly embedded inside. Without the password key the file or document cannot be opened.
Extracting the file or document from the JPG image is just as simple. Select the Outguess image in the extract panel. Type in the password key. Click the Extract button.
How safe and secure is an image embedded with a file? Very.
First, out of sight, out of mind. JPG images are so common it’s unlikely anyone would suspect that a photo also contained a file or document with an embedded message. Second, a thief or hacker or NSA agent or Russian spy would need to know that and use Outguess to extract the image but without the password key that won’t happen, either.
Outguess is free and it’s about as simple as it can be to get a file or message hidden out of sight within the confines of a JPG image or photo.