software and tricks

How to Hide Files on Hard Drives Without Encryption?

Researchers Devise Way to Hide Files on Hard Drives Without Encryption

Academic researchers have devised a new method to hide data files on hard drives from a third party "in plain sight."

A new application can hide sensitive data on a hard drive without encrypting it or leaving any obvious signs that the data is present, according to the academic researchers who developed it. This kind of a technique would allow organizations to safely conceal private information from unauthorized users.

The new software uses “steganography,” or the process of hiding data in plain sight, according to researchers from the University of Southern California and the National University of Science and Technology in Pakistan. The technique exploits the way the operating system normally splits up file data in numerous small chunks, called clusters, and writes them wherever there is free space on the hard drive.

Hassan Khan, Mobin Javed, Syed Ali Khayam and Fauzan Mirza collaborated on the paper “Designing a Cluster-Based Covert Channel to Evade Disk Investigation and Forensics.” Khan and his colleagues claim the process hides data so effectively that it would be “unreasonably complex” for a third-party to detect it.

The method employs a “covert channel” to encode sensitive information. Instead of the operating system writing small pieces of the file in random areas on the hard drive, the software chooses the positions according to a secret code. The person who wants to access the file just needs to know the key to figure out where the fragments were written and reassemble the clusters accordingly.

“We present a new, plausible deniability approach to store sensitive information on a cluster-based filesystem,” the researchers wrote in the paper.

The process doesn’t leave behind any information about what it did, so anyone looking at the hard disk drive cannot see the hidden information or even be able to tell it exists, the researchers claimed. The hard drive would look like any other moderately fragmented drive.

Currently, users interested in protecting data generally wind up using encryption software. However, existing cryptographic methods generally leave behind some indicators that that the file has been encrypted. Attackers know there is something hidden and can try to use other methods to obtain the secret key to access the data.

Other existing methods involve adding pixels in digital images or changing the transmission timing of network packets. These are all well-known techniques and easily detected, the researchers said.

“An investigator without the key cannot prove the presence of hidden information,” the authors wrote.

The researchers tested the process on a FAT32 file system, which is accessible by the Windows operating system, Mac OS X and all major Linux distributions. The researchers envisioned using the software to write data onto a portable USB drive. The program won’t work to hide data on a Windows 7 laptop, for example, because the operating system can’t be installed on FAT32.

If the drive is defragmented, the “hidden” file will no longer be accessible.

The covert channel approach may cause a small performance degradation on the system, but the developers claimed it isn’t enough to be an issue. They estimated that it would be feasible to hide about 20MB of data on a typical 160GB hard disk drive.

How To Protect Your Computer From USB Viruses

Here are few useful tips that can help you to protect your computer from USB Viruses.

1) FreeCommander

When user double clicks on theUSB drive files pointed by the autorun.inf got executed which copies the virus files on your system.So , you should open your USB drive through FreeCommander , it’s file explorer like windows explorer.

Download FreeCommander

2) Windows Feature Autorun

Mostly USB viruses contains autorun.inf and .bat file or similar . Autorun is windows feature which automatically initiates inserted usb or cd/dvd . For example , below is simple autorun.inf file that will launch program called launch.bat , launch.bat can be virus

[autorun]
open=launch.bat
ACTION= Perform a Virus Scan

So, to protect your computer from usb threats I suggest you to disable autorun feature.

How To Disable Autorun Feature Manually
1) Go to Run > type gpedit.msc

2) Under User configuration expand Administrative templates and select Windows Components..

3) Go to Autoplay Polices

4) Double click on Turn off autoplay

5) Select the radio button Enable- > Click ok

3)Protect Your USB Drive From Virus With Dummy Files

To prevent virus attacks to your PC, you must make your USB storage device free from virus as well which are most of the time plug and played to your PC. Usually, most of the virus and worms copies to your USB drive easily. No matter what you do, you cannot stop this action form virus when you insert your USB drive to infected computer. But to prevent from un-authorized copying of viruses you can make your USB storage device completely full so that no more files can be added to it. But filling up the storage device will not be practical as you have to add some heavy contents there and you won’t like to put large contents which will often hectic job. But after following this tutorial you’ll feel easier to do that.

4) Scan USB devices with antivirus

It’s a good idea to scan usb devices with updated antivirus software’s . Check my previous article Best Free Antivirus Software . there you’ll find some good free antivirus.

5)USB Write Protector

These viruses tend to copy themselves to the flash drive whenever system detected new device plug in. I still remember there are some old USB drives that come with write protect feature. But unfortunately most of the new flash drive don’t come with such feature, maybe the manufacturers want to cut down the cost?
So, the only way to protect our USB flash drive is enable the write protect through our own PC. With USB Write Protector, you can turn on/off the write protect to a USB flash drive.

Download USB Write Protector