Automating Image Stenography using Python

Note: This project is for cybersecurity educational purposes only.

Environment: I created this project on macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) using Pyton 3.12.0.

Python libraries installed: ‘PIL' (Python Imaging Library) library:

In order to install a Python Library in my Pyton project, I first have to install virtualenv at the root of my project folder using the following command:

pip3 install virtualenv

Pip, which is a Python package manager, comes with your Python install from the official Python site. And since I have Python 3.12.0 installed, I need to use the pip3 command instead of simply the pip command on macOS.

This command creates a venv folder at the root of your project.

Next, I have to initialize my virtual environment with the following command:

source ./venv/bin/activate

This command triggers a virtual environment for my project so that I can then install packages and use them for my project. The virtual environment needs to be running in order for the packages to work! I just keep it running all the time while I am working on a project. The way that you can tell that your virtual environment is active is if you see (venv) to the left of your command prompt in your Terminal window pointing to your project path.

In order to install the ‘PIL' (Python Imaging Library) library needed for this project, I run the following command while my virtual environment:

pip3 install pillow

How to run this Image Stenography automation program:

First run the hide_text.py file in the command line from within the project root folder:

python3 hide_text.py

This command hides text inside a newly created image, a copy of the original image, but with a different file name, that contains the hidden text.

Next I run the extract_text.py file in the command line from within the project root folder:

python3 extract_text.py >> output_text.txt

This command executes the extract_text function inside the extract_text.py file and redirects the output of the print() function inside extract_text.py to a (new) file called output_text.txt. So if you intend to run this command, first remove the current output_text.txt as well as the output_geranimo-bKhETeDV1WM-unsplash.png image so that you can re-create your own from scratch!

By modularizing these functions, I am able to easily re-use them and even separately in other projects.