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README.txt
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Arik's Steganography Tools (ArikTools)
==========================================
ArikTools -- a tool for secretly hiding messages in losslessly compressed
images, and a suite of steganalytic tools
Copyright (C) Arik Z.Lakritz, Peter Macko, and David K. Wittenberg
Contents:
0. Contact
1. Introduction
2. Compiling and running ArikTools
3. Want ArikTools to really work?
0. Contact
--------------
Project Website: http://code.google.com/p/ariktools/
Contact: Peter Macko <[email protected]>
Arik Lakritz <[email protected]>
1. Introduction
-------------------
ArikTools is a tool for secretly hiding messages in uncompressed or losslessly
compressed images, such as PNGs, and a suite of several steganalytic tools for
manually inspecting images.
The program is a canonical implementation of the XLSB steganographic algorithm,
developed by the tool's original authors, which can hide large amounts of data
in losslessly compressed images. It builds upon the canonical LSB approach, but
unlike it, it is very careful to preserve a wide range of statistical
properties, avoiding most (if not all) steganalytic techniques known at the
time XLSB was originally developed (end of 2007).
** IMPORTANT NOTE **
While we believe that ArikTools's XLSB is sufficiently strong to avoid most
steganalytic techniques, note that the ongoing research in steganalysis
can potentially defeat it in the future, unless it has already happened. So
please use this tool with caution and at your own risk.
2. Compiling and running ArikTools
--------------------------------------
The best way to build and run ArikTools is with ant. To build it, just run
"ant" in the project's root directory. To run the program, type "ant run".
Note that ArikTools uses a large amount of Java heap space, because it
manipulates large amounts of image data. Please make sure to run the program
with sufficient Java memory settings; the size of the heap should not be
less than 256 MB, and ideally, should be even higher.
3. Want ArikTools to really work?
-------------------------------------
Note that ArikTools's XLSB is designed to work only with uncompressed and/or
losslessly compressed images, such as PNG - not JPEG. To achieve the best
results, take your own photo with a camera that can store the picture as TIFF
or RAW. It is important that the cover picture is a photo - not a drawing or a
scan, and not generated by a computer program. It is also important that the
photo was never compressed as JPEG or using any other lossy compression scheme
in order to defeat steganalytic attacks that focus on looking for the former
presence of (JPEG) compression artifacts. If you have to use JPEG, use as high
quality settings as you can get away with.
Once ArikTools generates a stegoimage (a cover image with embedded secret
data), do not ever compress it using a lossy technique, including JPEG.
Lossy compression scheme would destroy the embedded secret.
Also, note that in its current implementation, ArikTools does not password
protect the data, so any stegoimage generated using ArikTools can be decoded
by anyone using ArikTools. We will hopefully address it in a future release,
but if you beat us to it, please send us patches :)