The Power of Steganography

The past week (while I was ill), I was really bored at home watching YouTube videos and crying so much about how painful my stomach felt. I was looking through a set of videos from Tinkernut (or Gigafide), a very informative YouTube channel that teaches quite interesting things. One of the videos I watched was about steganography (the art of concealing a message, image or file within another message, image or file). I found it quite interesting, because it can be quite useful to use.

The easiest one in the video is LSB (least significant bit) steganography. It uses an MP3 file and an image. He then takes the MP3 file and “puts it” into the image. Here are the steps:

Open command prompt (Window R -> cmd )

You will need the directory address of your files. It is recommended that you keep them in one folder for organizational purposes.

In the command prompt, go to the folder where you have all your files using the cd command. Remember, use the folder’s directory address (the folder must exist for the command to work):

cd "desktop/Folder/Special Folder/Why are you in here/Seriously Get Out/This will take some time/Just leave now/Please leave this folder/Do not touch this folder/You thought this was the last folder/You thought wrong/Please get out/Seriously get out/GET OUT/PLEASE/IM BEGGING HERE/VIRUS/SUPER VIRUS/MEGA VIRUS/porn/You perv/Fine I quit/two more folders/next one is the real folder/steganography folder"

You should be in the folder directory of your folder. Enter the following:

copy /b name-of-the-image.jpg + the-song-you-want-hide.mp3 name-of-the-new-file.jpg

Hit Enter and you should have a new file in your folder. Tell your buddy that (s)he needs to change the file extension from JPEG (.jpg) to MP3 (.mp3) get the actual song you wanted to send.

It’s quite useful. Although the “easiest” way is just put it in an encrypted zip file, but that’s no fun.

Here’s the video if you’re interested:

Reviving My Old Gadgets

After summer cleaning my house, I found a few gems that I used to love when I was about as young as a tadpole.

Well, not really.

I found my old Canon PowerShot A400 camera that only had 3.2 megapixels! It’s a dinosaur, The last time I used it was in our 2013 Vacation Bible School, but the last last time I used it was 3 years back, before I had my Nikon CoolPix camera. Anyways, long story short, I found this old bulk of junk (it still works fine, except for the clock battery) and I plan to use it as a backup camera when all else fails.

Also, I found my old iPod 5th Generation (yes, I have one for music purposes only). The only reason I bought that was for the high quality camera and basic music listening. Everything else was a hassle. iTunes is bloated and a crazy source hog and well, it’s Apple. Enough said.

I plan to revive these two gadgets. The iPod Nano is still useful for playing music. Ever since I got my phone, that’s what I’ve been using as an MP3 player. The bad thing about it is that it dies out easily because we use it as an MP3 player for long trips. That will most likely be the use for this: a car ride MP3 player!

Sometimes, the oldest of things can still give out a little juice. Finding ways to reuse them is a great thing, because not only does it help the environment, it also helps us realize that everything is useful, in one way or another.

Keep Chewing!