---
title: "How to use Steghide to Hide Secret Messages Inside Files"
url: https://bee.whoisjason.me/blogposts/q6krygj5gn49r6i
author: Jason
published: 2025-11-20
topics: ["linux"]
summary: "In this I overview how you can use the tool steghide to hide secret information within a file"
reading_time_minutes: 2
word_count: 250
---
# How to use Steghide to Hide Secret Messages Inside Files

> In this I overview how you can use the tool steghide to hide secret information within a file

## What you will need

First check all these boxes

-   Installed Steghide
    
-   have a picture or some file you want to embed data into
    
-   have another secret-message.txt file you want to embed
    
-   all files within the same directory
    

Now on your machine run this command

```bash
steghide --embed -p MyPassword -ef secret-message.txt -cf OriginalPicture.jpg -sf SecretDataPictureEndResultFileName.jpg
```

Now lets run through what that does, if you care.

**Steghide -** This is the binary you are running

**\--embed -** This is saying I want to put data in not take data out

**\-p** \- use a password, anything after this becomes a password, uses standard UNIX so you can do stuff like " " or | | as surrounding to make a more complex password possible

**\-ef** \- this is the file you want to jam into the other file

**\-cf** \- This is the original picture you already had before running the command

**\-sf** \- This is a file that does not exist yet, but you can specify the output file with this flag

### how to decode the message

Now to move on to the next part I like to use a tool like *LocalSend* to send the newly made SecretDataPictureEndResultFileName.jpg to another machine, then on the other machine you would run this command

```bash
steghide --extract -p MyPassowrd -sf SecretDataPictureEndResultFileName.jpg
```

Now lets run through what that does:

**Steghide -** This is the binary you are running

**\--extract** \- This is the opposite of what we did before, this time we decode not encode

**\-p** \- The same password we set from before

**\-sf** \- the file you know has secret data in