Steganography on an Image file

[Lovlin Thakkar]

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: image == null!
       at javax.imageio.ImageTypeSpecifier.createFromRenderedImage(Unknown Source)
       at javax.imageio.ImageIO.getWriter(Unknown Source)
       at javax.imageio.ImageIO.write(Unknown Source)
       at y.main(y.java:36)

I am getting this error as i try to modify bytes of an image and generate a new one.

I am trying to hide a string message by converting it to binary and adding it to last two bits of the image bytes (LSB Steganography).

When a message is typed it gives above error, but if no message is written it doesn't show the error and makes a copy of the image.

I am a beginner at this, any kind of help would be appreciated.

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage; import java.io.*; import static java.lang.Math.pow; import java.util.Scanner; import javax.imageio.ImageIO; public class y{ public static void main(String[] args){ try{                Scanner in = new Scanner(System.in); File f = new File("download.png"); FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream(f); byte[] arr = new byte[(int) f.length()]; fis.read(arr); fis.close(); int i = 0; byte[] a = {StringToByte("00000001"), StringToByte("00000010"), StringToByte("00000100"), StringToByte("00001000"), StringToByte("00010000"), StringToByte("00100000"), StringToByte("01000000"), StringToByte("10000000")};                System.out.println("Enter the message you want to hide:");                String message = in.nextLine();                byte[] msg = message.getBytes();                for(int j=0; j<msg.length; j++){                    for(i=0; i<4; i++){ //arr1[i] = arr[i]; arr[4*j+i] |= (byte) (((byte) (msg[j] & a[2*i])) >> 2*i); arr[4*j+i] |= (byte) (((byte) (msg[j] & a[2*i+1])) >> 2*i); //System.out.println(arr[i]-arr1[i]);                    }                }                InputStream inn = new ByteArrayInputStream(arr);                BufferedImage bImageFromConvert = ImageIO.read(inn);                ImageIO.write(bImageFromConvert, "png", new File("download1.png")); }catch(IOException e){e.printStackTrace();} }                public static String byteToString(byte b) {            byte[] masks = { -128, 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1 };            StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();            for (byte m : masks) {                if((b & m) == m) {                    builder.append('1');                }                else {                    builder.append('0');                }                }                return builder.toString();            }

[Tim Moores]

Apparently "bImageFromConvert" is null - if it is, the code shouldn't try to write it to a file. The javadocs of ImageIO.read state the conditions under which it returns null - make sure those aren't met.

[Campbell Ritchie]

...and welcome to the Ranch

[Tony Docherty]

I'm no expert on image formats so may be wrong here but I don't think you can just append a few bytes to the end of the file and still have a valid PNG formatted file which may be why ImageIO.read() is returning null.
PNG does support metadata though so you could  try to add your data as metadata (Beware: metadata can be deleted by some image editing programs so if the image is opened and saved in a program that doesn't support PNG metadata the data may well be lost). If you want to hide the text in the actual image then you probably need to read the PNG specification to find out how the file is formatted and how you can modify/append bytes and maintain a valid file format.

For adding metadata see this stackoverflow thread

[Tim Moores]

Tony Docherty wrote:I'm no expert on image formats so may be wrong here but I don't think you can just append a few bytes to the end of the file and still have a valid PNG formatted file which may be why ImageIO.read() is returning null.

I don't think there's any appending going on (the array being written has the same size as the array being read), but "arr" contains the entire file -including metadata- rather than just the image data. You should read the image data into a BufferedImage using ImageIO.read, and then do the bit manipulations on the Raster obtained via getRaster(). When you're done, copy the data back into the BufferedImage via setData(Raster), and save it via ImageIO.write.

[Norman Radder]

What is the purpose of the StringToByte() method?  Why not directly code the desired bytes:

  byte[] theBits = {0b1, 0b10, 0b100};

[Tony Docherty]

Tim Moores wrote:

Tony Docherty wrote:I'm no expert on image formats so may be wrong here but I don't think you can just append a few bytes to the end of the file and still have a valid PNG formatted file which may be why ImageIO.read() is returning null.

I don't think there's any appending going on (the array being written has the same size as the array being read), but "arr" contains the entire file -including metadata- rather than just the image data. You should read the image data into a BufferedImage using ImageIO.read, and then do the bit manipulations on the Raster obtained via getRaster(). When you're done, copy the data back into the BufferedImage via setData(Raster), and save it via ImageIO.write.

Sorry my mistake, I didn't read the OP's post correctly. Your suggestion is correct. PNG files have a header section so you can't just overwrite the file wherever you feel like but you should be able overwrite the data in the Raster section as you suggested

[Lovlin Thakkar]

Norman Radder wrote:What is the purpose of the StringToByte() method?  Why not directly code the desired bytes:

  byte[] theBits = {0b1, 0b10, 0b100};

Yeah, true.  Don't know how did I forget this.

[Lovlin Thakkar]

Tim Moores wrote:

Tony Docherty wrote:I'm no expert on image formats so may be wrong here but I don't think you can just append a few bytes to the end of the file and still have a valid PNG formatted file which may be why ImageIO.read() is returning null.

I don't think there's any appending going on (the array being written has the same size as the array being read), but "arr" contains the entire file -including metadata- rather than just the image data. You should read the image data into a BufferedImage using ImageIO.read, and then do the bit manipulations on the Raster obtained via getRaster(). When you're done, copy the data back into the BufferedImage via setData(Raster), and save it via ImageIO.write.

BufferedImage im = ImageIO.read(f);
        WritableRaster wr = im.getRaster();
        DataBufferByte dfb = (DataBufferByte) wr.getDataBuffer();
    	byte[] arr = dfb.getData();
        //Logic for manipulation of bits goes here
        BufferedImage img = ImageIO.read(new ByteArrayInputStream(arr));
	File out = null;
        ImageIO.write(img,"jpg",out);

I've done this to get raster data from file f and then write the changed array to the bufferedimage. I don't know how to write an array to a raster or to a databufferbyte and cannot find on the internet either. Can you please help me with this?

[Tony Docherty]

Sorry, not sure what your problem is.
The code shown will convert the byte array to a BufferedImage. It's then trying to write the BufferredImage to a file which will fail as the File object is null.