In this generation of modern technology and the fast development in digital information, security is one of the most crucial elements that everybody is trying to achieve.
One of the most sought out strengths is the ability to hide the information from plain sight. With this, steganography can make it possible.
Stenography is a method used to hide images, audio messages, and data information, inside another file or piece of information.
While this might be a new term for you, the word steganography has been existing since the 1500s. It was a term that was used by Johannes Trithemius in one of his books called Steganographia.
This article will tell us more about steganography and its application in cybersecurity. Continue reading now.
Cybersecurity Steganography
In the perspective of cybersecurity, it is defined as the method of concealing data within an ordinary message, non-hidden, or ordinary file to prevent detection. The concealed data can then be opened to its destination.
Purpose of Steganography
Stenography has different ways of how to conceal information. One of the most common techniques is embedding the information into an image file.
An image file holds several megabytes to support the pixels, with this, it enables some space for a user to embed a piece of steganographic information within the image file.
By using steganographic applications, an illegal hacker can take advantage of every little data space in a file and embed it with malicious software codes.
Depending on what type of malicious content, when it is accessed by the user the attacker can now control the network or device.
The danger of steganography when applied to cybercrime is that the image or file can be closely similar to the original file, making it difficult to differentiate using your eyes.
Application in Today’s Generation
Up to this moment, the use of steganography is still very popular among illegal hackers and cybercriminals. Their recent approach or method of attack is using an audio file to embed the malicious content.
Methods Used in Steganography
Here are some of the well-known methods used in steganography.
Insignificant Bit
Using this method, the attacker will look for a relevant file with the least significant bits of information that is carried by the file and they will substitute it with their concealed malicious content.
As the user downloads the infected file it will activate malware in the computer or device. To combat this type of method, cybersecurity experts optimize the use of sandboxes to identify malicious files.
However, since illegal hackers do not have any boundaries in their attack, they can counter the security protocol by using sleep patching.
This type of malware can not be easily detected by sandboxes. The malware will take the time and study the sandbox and activate whenever the system is most vulnerable.
Palette Technique
The attackers will encrypt the message and conceal it in a palette of an image. This type of method is limited to the amount of data that can be stored, but, it can challenge security experts and applications because the malware is encrypted and will take a lot of time to decrypt.
Career Opportunity
These are just some of the techniques on how an illegal hacker can bring challenges to ethical hackers.
If you are interested to learn more about the awareness and different techniques on how ethical hackers combat these harmful elements.
You can learn by enrolling in our cybersecurity online course and certification program in ethical hacking, here at Reliable Cyber Solutions, LLC. Check us out at RCyberSolutions.
