Analyzing Image Malware with OSINTs after Steganography using Symmetric Key Algorithm

Abstract

Steganography is the practice of hiding a message or information
within another file, such as an image (Singh & Singla, 2022). OSINT (Open
Source Intelligence) involves using publicly available information for
intelligence gathering purposes. In this research, the asymmetric key
algorithm will be applied to the steganography method, using 10 images with
different sizes and dimensions. Images tested for steganography are in tiff,
gif, png, jpg, and bmp format. A combination of steganography and OSINT
could involve analyzing and decoding images found on publicly available
platforms, such as social media, to uncover hidden messages. On the other
hand, steganography within OSINT can also be used to protect sensitive
information from prying eyes. Overall, the combination of Symmetric Key
Algorithm steganography and OSINT can be a powerful tool for both
intelligence gathering and secure communication. Here in this work,
malware is developed, and using that malware the victim’s machine is
exploited. Later, an analysis is done via freely available OSINTs to find out
which is the best OSINT that gives the best results. OSINTs have been very
helpful in identifying whether the URLs and files are malicious or not. But
how binding an image with the malware makes it difficult for OSINTs to
identify they are malicious or not is being analyzed in this work. The analysis
shows that the best OSINT is VirusTotal which has a greater number of
engines that could detect the malware whereas others don’t have a variety of
engines to detect the malware. Also, when it comes to malware afore binding
it with an image is easier to detect whereas for an OSINT it was difficult to
identify and detect the malware after binding with an image

GS Cited Analysis