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F5 Archiver

This repository contains a pure C implementation of a steganographic data compression technique based on the F5 algorithm in forms of a library and a command-line tool. With it you can embed any binary data in your JPEG files while reducing total data space in your memory without noticeable changes in used images.

You can read a little more on the subject in my medium post.

Building

Simple make is used to build everything. On windows you can use Cygwin or WSL to use it properly. If you want to follow a non-Unix way, you'll need to figure it out for yourself.

Dependencies

This project depends on libjpeg (for JPEG decoding and encoding), pcre and tinydir APIs. Since tinydir is provided via the simple header file included in the tree, you only need to make sure you have POSIX regex and libjpeg-compatible APIs linked during the compilation.

If something is not present on your machine, you can build static versions of both libjpeg-turbo's and pcre from an official repositories locally using make libjpeg and make pcre commands. Note that you will need wget, git and cmake.

All necessary headers included in the tree.

Usage

You can use F5-based data compression via both a command-line tool and a C/C++ API.

Command-line tool

Pack and unpack archives from a terminal using f5ar executable in a simple Unix way.

Locate built executable f5ar and use this command to pack data:

./f5ar -p [root library folder] [regex] [file to compress] [archive name]

And this one to unpack it:

./f5ar -u [acrhive file path] [output file]

Make sure that your regex matches only actual jpeg files to prevent any kinds of misunderstandings and possibly ruin your data.

API

An API provided by the target libf5ar and f5ar.h header file.

Typical packing process looks like this:

  1. Allocate f5archive and fill it with zeroes;
  2. Initialize it with f5ar_init() call;
  3. Call f5ar_add*() functions to add JPEG files and form a desired archive;
  4. (optional) Use f5ar_analyze() to check if you have enough capacity in your fresh library;
  5. Call f5ar_pack() with your data;
  6. Save the archive by serializing meta field and the order exported with f5ar_export_order().

Typical unpacking process flow:

  1. Allocate f5archive and fill it with zeroes;
  2. Initialize it with f5ar_init() call;
  3. Deserialize meta field and the order, import the last one with f5ar_import_order();
  4. Use f5ar_fill*() functions to fill the archive with JPEG files until the returned value is F5AR_OK_COMPLETE;
  5. Call f5ar_unpack() and retrieve your data.

You can use the utility source code as an example if you need more info. Also check out the main header file for more insights on advanced usage.

Command-line-like API

If you are a weirdo and want to use the library the same way you are using the command-line tool, you can use libf5arcmd target and f5ar_cmd.h header file avoiding any confusion using a process forking, pipes and other stuff.

License

Simplified BSD