Show HN: Stegcore – steganography and steganalysis in one Rust binary

Stegcore, a new Rust-based steganography tool, hides encrypted messages inside images and audio files without altering their appearance, offering deniable dual-payload mode and steganalysis at Aletheia parity. The tool runs entirely offline with no network connections, using authenticated ciphers and Argon2id key derivation, and is available as a native binary with CLI and GUI for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Stegcore hides encrypted messages inside everyday pictures and sound files. The file still looks and sounds completely normal. Nobody can tell it contains a hidden message, not your internet provider, not a border agent, not a forensic analyst with professional tools. Your data never leaves your device. No accounts. No cloud. No telemetry. No network connections of any kind. One passphrase to hide, the same passphrase to recover. If someone ever forces you to hand over a password, give them the decoy one. Stegcore can hold two messages in the same file, each with its own passphrase. Nobody looking at the file can tell which half has the real message, or that a second message exists at all. Steganalysis at Aletheia parity.Stegcore matches Aletheia , the public reference for steganalysis, on three classical detectors Sample Pair Analysis, RS, Weighted Stego to floating-point precision, and runs roughly 100× faster on the RS code path in Rust. Detector thresholds are calibrated against real clean images Cassavia 2022, BOSSbase 1.01 and an ALASKA2 sample at a documented low false-alarm rate, never guessed. Everything else embedding, extracting, encryption, deniable mode, GUI, CLI is production-ready. What is under the hood Three authenticated ciphers Ascon-128, ChaCha20-Poly1305, AES-256-GCM . Argon2id for turning passphrases into encryption keys, tuned to make brute force painful. Adaptive embedding that picks noisy parts of the cover file so the hidden data disappears into the natural grain. Deniable dual-payload mode. Steganalysis suite at Aletheia parity on the classical SPA / RS / WS detectors, plus tiered structural tool fingerprinting Exact and Heuristic . Desktop GUI and CLI. One small native binary. Grab the latest release for your platform from the Releases page https://github.com/The-Malware-Files/Stegcore/releases . | Platform | CLI | GUI | |---|---|---| Linux x86 64 | .tar.gz | .AppImage or .deb | macOS Intel and Apple Silicon | Universal binary | .dmg | Windows x86 64 | .zip | .msi | Same URL works on Linux, macOS and Windows. Detects your platform automatically. Linux and macOS: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/The-Malware-Files/Stegcore/main/install | sh Windows PowerShell : irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/The-Malware-Files/Stegcore/main/install | iex Installer options Pin a version STEGCORE VERSION=v4.0.1 curl -fsSL .../install.sh | bash Custom install directory STEGCORE DIR=/opt/stegcore curl -fsSL .../install.sh | bash Uninstall bash install.sh --uninstall Windows options .\install.ps1 -Component both CLI plus GUI .\install.ps1 -Version v4.0.1 Pin version .\install.ps1 -Uninstall Remove .\install.ps1 -DryRun Preview only cargo build --workspace --release This produces the CLI at target/release/stegcore . For the desktop app, run cargo tauri build from the repo root. Guided wizard best for first time users stegcore wizard Hide a message stegcore embed cover.png secret.txt -o stego.png Recover a message stegcore extract stego.png -o recovered.txt Check a file for a hidden message stegcore analyse suspect.png Scan a folder with a progress bar stegcore analyse .png --json Works in pipes echo "secret" | stegcore embed cover.png - -o stego.png stegcore extract stego.png --raw | xxd stegcore score cover.png Is this file a good hiding spot? stegcore diff cover.png stego.png Show the pixel difference stegcore info stego.png Read metadata needs the passphrase stegcore ciphers List available encryption options stegcore doctor System health check stegcore benchmark Test how fast your machine runs the ciphers stegcore completions bash Shell completion setup stegcore verse A small daily encouragement Full flag reference: stegcore --help . Launch Stegcore, then follow the step-by-step wizards for hiding, recovering, or checking files. Drag and drop works everywhere. | Feature | What it does | |---|---| | Embed wizard | Four-step flow: message, cover file, options, confirm | | Extract wizard | Three-step flow: stego file, passphrase, recovered payload | | Analysis dashboard | Animated charts for each detector with the verdict and per-test scores. | | Audio analysis | Waveform view with suspicious regions highlighted | | Pixel diff | Before and after comparison on embed success | | Export | Copy the dashboard to clipboard, export as PDF, HTML, JSON or CSV | Analysis history stays on your device. Nothing leaves. | Format | Hide | Recover | Analyse | Notes | |---|---|---|---|---| | PNG | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Best capacity and concealment | | BMP | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Lossless | | JPEG | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | JSteg style JPEG embedding | | WebP | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Lossless WebP | | WAV | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | PCM audio, least significant bit | | FLAC | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Lossless audio, bit-exact round-trip | We compare against the tools we have actually run side by side Steghide and OpenStego . Broader head-to-head benchmarks are an ongoing effort. | Stegcore | Steghide | OpenStego | | |---|---|---|---| | Works offline | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | Modern encryption | 3 authenticated ciphers plus Argon2id | Rijndael plus MD5 | AES-128 | | Deniable dual-payload | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | | Built-in analysis | ✓ SPA + RS + WS + fingerprints | ✗ | ✗ | | Cover scoring | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | | Pixel diff | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | | GUI + CLI | ✓ | CLI only | GUI only | | Works in pipes | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | | Actively maintained | ✓ 2026 | ✗ 2003 | ✗ 2016 | Stegcore is built in public, so we are specific about what it catches and what it does not. Classical detectors at Aletheia parity. Sample Pair Analysis, RS and Weighted Stego match the public Aletheia https://github.com/daniellerch/aletheia reference to floating-point precision, and run far faster in Rust. Strong on spatial least-significant-bit replacement at moderate and higher payloads, and on tools that leave a structural fingerprint OpenStego, for example , where a hit is effectively decisive. Hard, and we say so. Very low payloads, LSB-matching, and JPEG-domain hiding are difficult for classical steganalysis. Stegcore does not pretend otherwise. Per-release detection numbers, measured on public datasets against Aletheia, are published in the changelog /The-Malware-Files/Stegcore/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md . You can rerun the analysis on your own files: stegcore analyse your-images/ .png --json your-scores.jsonl Stegcore is dual-licensed. AGPL-3.0-or-later : the default. Free for individuals, researchers, open-source projects, NGOs, and anyone willing to release their own derivative source under the same terms. See LICENSE /The-Malware-Files/Stegcore/blob/main/LICENSE . Commercial licence : for organisations that want to build on Stegcore inside proprietary software, internal tools, or hosted services without the AGPL source-release obligation. See COMMERCIAL.md /The-Malware-Files/Stegcore/blob/main/COMMERCIAL.md . Either licence applies to the same codebase; you pick the one that fits your situation. The Acceptable Use Policy /The-Malware-Files/Stegcore/blob/main/AUP.md applies regardless of which licence you use. Contact: ops@themalwarefiles.com