Programs that use NTFS Alternate Data Streams for steganography?

Question

Are there programs that use ADS technology in NTFS for hiding data? What are some good ones?

stenography? shorthand? hahaha... i think you mean "steganography", hiding data... lmftfy...

sleske · Answer 1 · 2010-06-02 08:10:11Z

Well, the only program I know of that (claims) to do this is Xidie.

I don't really think a program will help you, however, because:

Steganography using ADS is really only a very superficial form of information hiding. Any computer professional will (should) know about ADS and check them, so you are not really hiding anything.
Even if you expect using ADS to be sufficiently secure, you can just create them using regular Windows tools, by appending ":" to a file's name. See e.g. http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=security/altds for an introduction. So what would you expect such a program to do?

Maybe you could open a new question, explaining your requirements in more detail, then we may be able to help.

+1 for point 1. ADS is only superficial hiding. If going down this path you might want to put something robust in the ADS like a TrueCrypt encrypted file container.
@Mike: What's the point of putting an encrypted file into an ADS, in stead of just using a regular file?
Stegenography is about hiding information but, as you pointed out, ADS is a weak way to go about hiding things. ADS will stop casual attackers and encryption will stop (or considerably slow) the more motivated/technical attackers. Personally I'd be happy to leave a TrueCrypt file container as a regular file but the original question was about steganography (although Jay called it stenography, which means shorthand).

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