JPEG image of Shakespeare which is also a zip file containing his complete works

Just tried it out and it does indeed work.<p><pre><code> curl &#x27;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pbs.twimg.com&#x2F;media&#x2F;DqteCf6WsAAhqwV.jpg&#x27; &gt; shakespeare.zip unzip shakespeare.zip unrar e shakespeare.part001.rar </code></pre> I&#x27;m excited for the inevitable curl | unzip | bash method of installing software directly from twitter that is sure to follow.

PoC||GTFO&#x27;s [0] most issues are polyglot files.<p>Taken from 0x16 [1]&#x27;s introduction:<p><pre><code> This file, pocorgtfo16.pdf , is a polyglot that is valid as a PDF document, a ZIP archive, and a Bash script that runs a Python webserver which hosts Kaitai Struct’s WebIDE which, allowing you to view the file’s own annotated bytes. </code></pre> [0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alchemistowl.org&#x2F;pocorgtfo&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alchemistowl.org&#x2F;pocorgtfo&#x2F;</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alchemistowl.org&#x2F;pocorgtfo&#x2F;pocorgtfo16.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alchemistowl.org&#x2F;pocorgtfo&#x2F;pocorgtfo16.pdf</a>

<p><pre><code> binwalk DqteCf6WsAAhqwV.jpg DECIMAL HEXADECIMAL DESCRIPTION -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0 0x0 JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01 182 0xB6 Zip archive data, at least v1.0 to extract, ..., name: shakespeare.part001.rar ... 1971177 0x1E13E9 End of Zip archive</code></pre>

This is also somewhat interesting...<p><i>&quot;It survives all of twitters scaling, compression and thumbnailing. &#x2F;how&#x2F; is left as an exercise to the reader :P&quot;</i>

This is hardly new. I remember collecting ebooks on 4chan circa 2005 via this method. The fact that it was a jpg allowed you to post it on the imageboard with the zip&#x2F;RAR file therein containing a txt&#x2F;doc&#x2F;rtf of the ebook.

I do extend him, sir, within himself; Crush him together rather than unfold

I tried doing something similar with an mp3 first, and that worked. You can&#x27;t upload mp3 files to twitter, but I have one here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;instaud.io&#x2F;2RLM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;instaud.io&#x2F;2RLM</a> Play it on the page, and it&#x27;s an mp3, download it via the buttons, and it&#x27;s also a valid zip file with a jpg in it.<p>So then I tried the same thing with MP4 video on twitter. Twitter didn&#x27;t like that at all :) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;O0QFZC9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;O0QFZC9</a>

Oh I did this too a few years ago. Except I used gifs instead of jpegs, and then wrote a Ruby wrapper for backing up files to Flickr. Blog post about it here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;namwen.svbtle.com&#x2F;hoardr" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;namwen.svbtle.com&#x2F;hoardr</a>

Anybody have any insight into what kind of trickery goes into this? I know a decent amount about both of the compression algorithms, but I&#x27;ve forgotten the structure of the file formats so I can&#x27;t tell if this required any really funny business.

If you are interested in this sort of thing, make sure to checkout Funky File Formats by Ange Albertini <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;events.ccc.de&#x2F;congress&#x2F;2014&#x2F;Fahrplan&#x2F;events&#x2F;5930.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;events.ccc.de&#x2F;congress&#x2F;2014&#x2F;Fahrplan&#x2F;events&#x2F;5930.htm...</a>

Very thought provoking. The file size is 1.93 MB. I wonder what dimensions would a disk just big enough to store that much have? Not long ago I read of a suggestion to archive information as DNA (for its durability iirc). But in terms of physical space required to store stuff, is DNA more or less efficient than today&#x27;s disks?

Can the technique be used to bypass content censorship (e.g. in China)? Can it be made resistant to detection?

For those who don&#x27;t know the trick: ZIP files have their index at the end of the file. So you can add a zip file to anything else and have it unzippable.<p>This was done because it allows adding files to zip archive files without rewriting the whole file, instead just start writing where the index starts and add an updated index at the end. Please note that over the years there&#x27;s been multiple methods of doing this, including partial indexes which don&#x27;t even rewrite the index.<p>If the file you&#x27;re adding things to is also tolerant of wrong file sizes and extra data at the end (like JPG and many others), you can just:<p>cat someJPG.jpg someZIP.zip &gt; wth.jpg<p>feh wth.jpg =&gt; shows image<p>mv wth.jpg wth.zip; unzip wth.zip =&gt; works

Would be interesting if Renaissance paintings were actually similar repositories.

There was a similar technique used in the tv show Mr. Robot, season 3 episode 9, to hide some secret information (trying not to spoil anything). Ryan Kazanciyan, the Technical Consultant, wrote a blog piece on this technique.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;link.medium.com&#x2F;x7YFdksWrR" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;link.medium.com&#x2F;x7YFdksWrR</a>

Dr. Mike Pound from Computerphile did a video on this &quot;Secrets Hidden in Images (Steganography)&quot; [Youtube video] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;TWEXCYQKyDc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;TWEXCYQKyDc</a>

Is there any reason the zip contains .rar files?

I dealt with this problem on a photo site 15 years ago where people were embedding RAR pieces in their JPGs to use us as a distribution repository. The bandwidth increase was a giveaway so I just wrote an incoming processor that re-compressed everything that had more than X bytes per pixel. I can&#x27;t believe Twitter doesn&#x27;t have similar logic given its scale.

Similarly, here is one with music. Winamp necessary. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;a.doko.moe&#x2F;uigihv.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;a.doko.moe&#x2F;uigihv.jpg</a>

Great What If question: what are the odds of taking a picture of a Shakerpeare play and get that play&#x27;s text in the resulting JPG?.

Do this for mp3.

I&#x27;m pretty sure Ender&#x27;s Game has this in it. It was how one of the characters snuck info out.

Simple Steganography. I wrote a similar article to use Amazon Photo storage as a free way to store files if anyone is curious how this works:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@eirurueta&#x2F;free-unlimited-cloud-storage-on-amazon-w-this-one-weird-trick-6f50d35b1159" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@eirurueta&#x2F;free-unlimited-cloud-storage-o...</a>

I f<i></i>*ing love technology...

are the complete works actually encoded in the pixels?

раржпег? this trick was used on anonymous forums for years.

Love it

Title should say “JPEG”, not “JPG”. “JPG” is just a file extension, not the name of the compression method.

Could the future of open source and P2P be tweeting apps to one another?