Athena Wiki

Audio Steganography

steganographybeginner

Index of audio steganography pages - spectrograms and MP3 analysis.

steganographyaudiospectrogrammp3wavindex

Audio Steganography

Audio steganography hides data in sound files. The most common technique is spectrogram steganography — text or images hidden in the frequency-time representation of audio.

Pages in This Subsection

PageDifficulty
SpectrogramsBeginner
MP3 SteganographyBeginner

Audio Steg Detection Workflow

Mermaid diagram

Quick Approach

Run universal file checks

exiftool audio.wav     # metadata check
strings audio.wav | grep flag  # direct string
binwalk audio.wav      # embedded files

Try steghide (WAV files)

steghide extract -sf audio.wav -p ""   # blank password
steghide extract -sf audio.wav -p "password"

Open in Audacity → view as Spectrogram

  1. Track dropdown → Spectrogram
  2. Window size: 2048 or 4096
  3. Look for text patterns in the high-frequency range

For MP3: check ID3 tags and mp3stego

exiftool audio.mp3        # ID3 tag check - look at Comment, TXXX
mp3stego -X audio.mp3     # mp3stego decode

Decode special encodings

multimon-ng -t wav -a DTMF audio.wav
# Morse code: listen at slow speed in Audacity
python3 -m sstv -d audio.wav -o output.png

Tools by Format

exiftool audio.wav
steghide extract -sf audio.wav -p ""
steghide info audio.wav
binwalk -e audio.wav
# Audacity → Spectrogram → window 2048

The spectrogram is the most common hiding place in beginner-level audio CTF challenges. Open Audacity first before running any other tools.


Common Encoding Types


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