This document attempts to answer common questions regarding the anti-steganography tool AntiSteg and its uses.
Q1: What is AntiSteg, and how can I get it?
A1: AntiSteg cleans steganographically-infected images and AVI movies of their potentially harmful content. To get a
copy of the software visit
Security Online Servies 1
Security Online Servies 2
Q2: What is Steganography?
A2: Steganography is an age-old means to hide information inconspicuously within data. In the world of computers, information is often hidden inside of images or movies. Commonly used image viewers/movie players, will display steganographically modified images/movies as they were originally intended, but will not reveal any of the information hidden inside.
Q3: Why should I be concerned about hidden information in images or AVI files? Maybe people simply want to
exchange private information without others knowing. Besides, how many Steganography tools are there?
A3: This may very well be true. But consider this: People can readily use a wide range of
encryption algorithms that allow them to make information unreadable by others. High bit
encryption tools and properly selected passwords, can make most serious attempts to crack
the encoding futile. On the other hand, pedophile rings, black-hat hackers and cyber-thieves
engaging in the distribution of child pornography, snuff movies, or performing corporate/personal data theft
have much to gain by hiding information inside of stegged images. The Web today contains
billions if not trillions of images and countless movies.
Almost every personal or corporate Web site can contain several images, and some sites
hort gigantic volumes of potentially very dangerous images, whereas other online services freely hawk movies,
which are made available to anybody in the world with an Internet connection. Even your own personal Web site may
contain images you got from an image repository stored on a CD/DVD, or you obtained from the Internet.
E-Mails or MMS may also contribute to the spread of these infected images.
A minimum and very conservative estimate of the number of Steganography tools would tally several dozens.
AntiSteg attempts to address them all!
Q4: What does it cost me to use or distribute AntiSteg?
A4: Nothing! AntiSteg is free for personal and non-commercial use or distribution.
Q5: Can I receive technical support for AntiSteg?
A5: Technical support will primarily be handled via this FAQ. So send in your comments, bug reports,
etc. to
Alternatively, if you require immediate help, consider making a donation via PayPal (See the Web site
for more information).
Q6: I am interested in using AntiSteg for commercial purposes, what are my costs?
A6: Again, consider making first a donation. Thereafter, you may apply for and if you so desire, purchase
a commercial license.
Q7: Does AntiSteg attempt to retrieve the content of stegged images?
A7: No! The amount of time it would take to crack just one properly encrypted hidden message inside
of a stegged image would be computationally impractical. AntiSteg simply makes it impossible to read
the hidden information stored inside of an image or an AVI file. After all this is more than sufficient
in helping curtail its spread.
Q8: Can antivirus, antispy, or antimalware tools help prevent the spread of stegged images/AVI movies and guarantee that my computers are steg-free?
A8: NO!
Q9: Do companies that host online image repositories and make them available to the public World wide do anything to prevent stegged images from being spread via their services?
A9: NO!
Q9: Do companies that allow image specific searches - like Google - do anything to prevent stegged images from being spread via their services?
A9: NO! As a matter of fact: Companies like Google, are a major contributor to the dissemination of dangerous images
They are widely used as online tools, but provide no security whatsoever!
Q10: So what should I do?
A10: You have three choices:
A11: Anything is possible! Again, consider making a donation and then supply your request for consideration and
a cost review.
Q12: On what operating systems does AntiSteg run?
A12: AntiSteg should work on most windows platforms like 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista and on many Linux distributions that
have Wine installed on them.
Q13: Is there a general reason for why AntiSteg may not run on some Linux systems?
A13: Some versions of Linux do not supply administrator rights to their common shells. Consider running su with the
necessary privileges.
Q14: I am unable to restore the backup files, because the file as.dat is missing, or lost. I've applied the restore option, but some files still remain in the backup directory. What should I do?
A14: You can restore these files with the asr.exe utility. Simply, type asr.exe
and hit return. The asr.exe program was not shipped with version 1.0, but is included in
all higher versions.
Q15: Does AntiSteg attempt to clean the audio stream(s) of AVI files?
A15: No. Even though it is possible to utilize audio streams to hide information, in most cases is the audio
stream size only a fraction of the video stream(s). It would be highly unlikely to hide substanial amounts of
video data within the audio stream. Chunking data though may still pose a problem.
Q16: How is it possible to effectively hide viruses within images? Is this really useful in helping their distribution as opposed to more common dissemination methods?
A16: Just like in Nature, computer viruses can exist and be extremley effectively spread, when in their crystaline state.
And just like with their natural counterparts, a simple external event can again reanimate them. This external event, will
most likely NOT be detected by common Anti-virus software. To summarize: since commonly sold anti-virus tools
neither screen for steganoraphical content in images or movies, nor are they prepared in any form or manner to detect and
scan for viral reanimation strategies (from crystaline/stasis state), they are utterly useless as effective sentinels in
dealing with upcoming computer threats!
Q17: How can I incorporate AntiSteg in my own applications?
A17: AntiSteg is a command line driven executable. Controlling it from your own application
is trivial. A very small amount of programming ability is of course required.
Q18: Will there be an SDK?
A18: An SDK is being considered.
Q19: What abount anti-stegging images or movies packed within archives?
A19: Has been added with version 1.2.
Q20: Are steganographical tools widely spread among the computing community?
A20: There are no known numbers. But you can take the following observation into account:
Until a few years ago, most common computer users where not aware of these tools.
In the last year, or two these tools have cropped up in numerous CD/DVD distributions as
put forth by various computer magazines (some with global reach). With no doubt,
steganographic tools have arrived in the mainstream computing community.
Q21: I think I've found an image that AntiSteg is unable to handle. What should I do?
A21: Send it in! See the main page for Upload of Samples instructions.
Q22: Are JPEG and GIF formated images really suitable for hidding information? Is there enough space to hide a complete image within them?
A22: YES! There are two very obvious solutions:
Q23: Besides the so far mentioned methods to hide information inside of images, are there other's I should be concerned about?
A23: Absolutely! As resources permit, new releases of AntiSteg will address them in due time.
So stay tuned...
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