The Magic Picture: Steganography in Bitmap Files

The Magic Picture: Steganography in Bitmap Files
Arabic


Instructors

Abdullah Seddiq

Computer Programmer

Sultan Bin AbdulAziz Science & Technology Center (Scitech) and
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM)

Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

*This video was sponsored by Saudi Aramco and produced by Sultan Bin Abdel Aziz Science & Technology Center

Lesson Feedback

Introduction

This video aims to connect many topics in computer science to reach the writing of an application that can do something useful in actual life. The student will get to know the concept of ciphering and hiding (Steganography in bitmap files), will have a glance at the American Standard Code for Information Interchange table "ASCII", will understand the structure of bitmap (BMP), and learn how color is stored. Also students will learn how to do some byte and bit level operations, and how to manipulate binary files. They will then use Visual Basic, or another programming language, to write a Windows application that ciphers and hides a computer file inside a digital picture or a photo -- with the look and feel of the image the same and no change whatsoever to its size. Prerequisites: It is recommended that students have previous knowledge of: Binary Systems; Computer storage unit "Byte", and its multiples: Kilo, Mega and Giga; Hexadecimal Editor; Programming basics and manipulating binary files.

  • You can download the VB application: MagicPic from this link here.
  • For those who do not have Windows, Abdullah Seddiq & Faisal Hammoud wrote a PHP script to do this steganography. You can try it through this link here

Instructor Biography

Abdullah Seddiq is a computer programmer who works at Scitech on software and hardware management. He has written many applications under Windows. Also he has a Bachelor's degree in English-Arabic translation, and is interested in teaching Information Technology. Mr. Seddiq launched the following website with his friend, Amer Jouz, for their application "Mohaffez" - learn more here.

Additional Online Resources

Wikipedia: Steganography
This is a Wikipedia overview of Steganography.