Hide secret messages inside music, pictures

December 5, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Do you remember the days when a child could coax a parent to send away for one of those secret decoder rings? Armed with such a ring, you could write secret messages to your friends, secure in the knowledge that your parents or teachers could never decrypt your secret thoughts.

Just to see if today’s kids have anything like that still available to them, I did a Google search and actually found one offered years ago by the makers of Ovaltine where you could receive your decoder ring and a chance to win $500 by successfully decoding a secret message. The offer was extended but it is long-since over.

But fear not, future secret agent. Although the ring may have become a small bit of history, your computer now offers kind of a modern-day substitute.

Probably the most popular type of file being traded and exchanged by today’s active youths are mp3 music files. In fact, mp3 players are being worn as fashion statements. They’re being worn around the neck, hung from belts and even integrated into clothing.

The newest iPod is being worn like a watch with a special strap that holds it on your wrist. So how about a way to secretly communicate to each other by embedding hidden text messages inside mp3 files?

Well, that’s exactly what you can do with a program called Secret Media from Direct Logic. The current version, Secret Media 2.0 for Windows actually lets you hide secret text messages within audio mp3 and graphic files. Supported files include JPG, MP3, WMA, GIF, BMP and WAV files.

According to Direct Logic, there is plenty of unused room within these files to embed messages without altering the actual content in any way. Even compressed formats such as jpeg that remove redundant and unused data still maintain enough unused space to easily hide lots of text information.

When you first launch Secret Media, a wizard-style interface guides users in creating and viewing hidden messages. To install a hidden message, you first select the data file into which the message will be placed. Then type in your message and Secret Media will determine if there is enough space available to hide all of it within the selected file. If not, you can shorten the message until it fits.

Reading a hidden message is just as easy. To keep secret messages hidden away from prying eyes who might also have a copy of the program, you’ll need a password before the message will be decrypted. It’s your mission to make sure that all of the friends in your secret circle have a copy of Secret Media and the password.

Let’s face it, this is not something that’s going to be undetectable to professional spies and decryption specialists. But then again, neither was the secret decoder ring. From the looks of things, I’d say that Secret Media is a fun little program that will probably let you fly below the usual radar set up by parents and teachers. It probably would never occur to them that your innocent pictures and audio files contain your secret information.

As an afterthought, you may find Secret Media to be an inexpensive kind of hidden “watermarking” application you could use to secretly mark and identify your proprietary or original data.

For example, a professional musician or photographer who wants to somehow label his or her work within the files might find something like Secret Media to be useful to embed copyright information.

There are, however, more professional applications out there that are specifically designed to do that sort of thing. But those programs are typically a lot more costly that the $19.99 you’ll shell out for a copy of Secret Media.

The search for practical applications aside, I’d like to think that something like Secret Media will have a great deal of appeal to the modern-day junior secret agent set. I know that my long-lost secret decoder ring still has some special memories for me. It’s just time to move all of that into the 21st century.

For more information, go to www.directlogic.com/secretmedia.php.

Craig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. He also hosts the No. 1 daily national computer radio talk show, “Computer America,” heard on Business TalkRadio — Monday through Friday, 10 p.m.-midnight. For more information, visit his website at www.computeramerica.com.

2010, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services