Provided by: gifshuffle_2.0-1build1_amd64 bug

NAME

       gifshuffle - GIF colourmap steganography program

SYNOPSIS

       gifshuffle [ -CQS1 ] [ -p passwd ] [ -f file | -m message ] [ infile.gif [ outfile.gif ]]

DESCRIPTION

       gifshuffle  is a program for concealing messages in GIF images by shuffling the colourmap.
       A shuffled image is visibly indistinguishable from the original. gifshuffle works with all
       GIF images, including those with transparency and animation.

       Consider  a  pack  of  52 cards. There are 52 factorial ways to sort the pack, which means
       that any particular ordering of the cards can represent a number in the range [0,  52!-1].
       In  other  words,  given n cards, you can store approximately log2(n!) bits of information
       based on their ordering.

       GIF images contain a colourmap with up to 256 entries,  resulting  in  a  maximum  storage
       capacity  of  1675  bits.  The image itself consists of a compressed array of indices into
       this colourmap. To conceal a message within a GIF image the following steps take place.

       1.     Start with the message you want to conceal, specified on the command line or  in  a
              file.  Optionally  compress  and/or  encrypt this message. You are then left with a
              sequence of 1's and 0's.

       2.     Prepend a 1 to this sequence, giving you a binary number m (probably quite large).

       3.     Next take a look at the GIF image that you want to conceal the message  in.   Count
              the  number of unique colours in the image, and call the value n.  If m > n!-1 then
              the message is too large, and the procedure will be aborted.

       4.     The colours in the colourmap are first sorted into their  "natural"  order  (except
              when  encryption  is  being used - see details below).  Each RGB colour is assigned
              the value (red * 65536 + green * 256 + blue), and the colours are sorted  according
              to these values. Any duplicate colours are removed.

       5.     Iterate i through the values 1 .. n. Each colour i-1 is allocated a target position
              (m mod i), then m is divided by i.

       6.     Each colour is then in turn inserted into a new colourmap at its  target  position.
              Colours previously occupying the target position and above are moved up one place.

       7.     If the size of the colourmap is greater than the number of unique colours, then the
              colourmap will be padded with the last colour from the original colourmap.

       8.     The image component of the GIF is then uncompressed, the  colour  indices  are  re-
              mapped to the new colourmap, and the image is re-compressed. For animated GIFs this
              is repeated for each image.

       Extracting a hidden message follows a similar procedure, but in reverse.  The ordering  of
       the colourmap is used to construct a binary number, which is then optionally decrypted and
       uncompressed before being output.

       gifshuffle provides rudimentary compression, using Huffman tables  optimised  for  English
       text.  However,  if  the  data  is  not text, or if there is a lot of data, the use of the
       built-in compression is not recommended, since an external  compression  program  such  as
       compress or gzip will do a much better job.

       Encryption  is  also provided, using the ICE encryption algorithm in 1-bit cipher-feedback
       (CFB) mode to encrypt the data (after compression).  Because of ICE's arbitrary key  size,
       passwords  of  any  length  up to 1170 characters are supported (since only 7 bits of each
       character are used, this means keys up to 1024-bytes are supported).

       As of gifshuffle 2.0 encryption is also applied to the ordering  of  the  colours  in  the
       colourmap. Instead of using their "natural" ordering, the ordering of their encrypted hash
       is used. This has the benefit of making colourmaps look random even when there is  only  a
       small  message concealed. To disable this feature (which is incompatible with version 1 of
       gifshuffle) use the -1 option.

       If a message string or message file are specified on  the  command-line,  gifshuffle  will
       attempt  to  conceal  the  message  in the file infile.gif if specified, or standard input
       otherwise.  The resulting file will be written to outfile.gif if  specified,  or  standard
       output if not.

       If  no message string is provided, gifshuffle attempts to extract a message from the input
       file. The result is written to the output file or standard output.

OPTIONS

       -C     Compress the data if concealing, or uncompress it if extracting.

       -Q     Quiet mode. If  not  set,  the  program  reports  statistics  such  as  compression
              percentages and amount of available storage space used.

       -S     Report  on  the  amount of space available for hidden message in the GIF colourmap.
              This is calculated from the number of unique colours in the image.

       -1     Retain compatibility with version 1 of gifshuffle by ordering colours  using  their
              "natural"  ordering, rather than their encrypted ordering. This is only relevant if
              a password is specified.

       -p password
              If this is set, the data will be encrypted with this password  during  concealment,
              or decrypted during extraction.

       -f message-file
              The contents of this file will be concealed in the input GIF image.

       -m message-string
              The  contents  of this string will be concealed in the input GIF image.  Note that,
              unless a newline is somehow included in the string, a newline will not  be  printed
              when the message is extracted.

EXAMPLES

       The following command will conceal the message "Meet me at 6" in the file infile.gif, with
       compression, and encrypted with the password "hello world". The  resulting  text  will  be
       stored in outfile.gif.

              gifshuffle -C -m "Meet me at 6" -p "hello world" infile.gif outfile.gif

       To extract the message, the command would be

              gifshuffle -C -p "hello world" outfile.gif

       Note that the resulting message will not be terminated by a newline.

       The storage capacity of a file can be determined with the -S option.

              gifshuffle -S infile.gif

AUTHOR

       This application was written by Matthew Kwan, who can be reached at mkwan@darkside.com.au