# RickdeJager/stegseek

:zap: Worlds fastest steghide cracker, chewing through millions of passwords per second :zap:

Repository: https://github.com/RickdeJager/stegseek
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/stegseek
Language: C++
License: GPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Topics: steghide, cracking, ctf, security, steganography, ctf-tools, stego, brute-force, pentesting, stegcracker
Last push: 2023-10-10T12:20:59+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2134, "days_push": 1058, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1288, forks 130 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:15.115892+00:00)

## What it is
Stegseek is a lightning-fast command-line cracker for steghide steganography, built as a fork of the original steghide project that can test millions of passwords per second (cracking rockyou.txt in under 2 seconds). It can also brute-force steghide's random seed to detect hidden content and extract unencrypted embedded data without knowing the password (CVE-2021-27211).

## Use cases
- crack a steghide password on a jpg or wav file with a wordlist
- extract hidden data from a steghide-encoded image
- check whether a file actually contains steghide data without a password
- brute force steganography passwords millions of times per second
- solve CTF steganography challenges with stego in images
- recover an embedded file from a steghide image that was hidden without encryption
- run a fast steghide cracker from a Docker container or Linux CLI

## When to choose
- You need to crack steghide passwords against a wordlist like rockyou.txt as fast as possible
- You want to detect whether a file contains steghide data or extract unencrypted payloads without the password
- You are working CTF challenges or pentest engagements involving steganography
- You want a lightweight CLI tool installable via .deb package or Docker on Linux/WSL

## When to avoid
- You need to hide/embed data with steghide rather than crack it - use the original steghide tool
- You need to crack steganography from other tools such as outguess, zsteg, or openstego - Stegseek only targets steghide
- You need a native Windows or GUI application - it only runs on Linux, via WSL, or in Docker
- The hidden data was encrypted with a strong password that is not in any wordlist

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: stable
- function: security, penetration-testing, cryptography, cli
- domain: security, penetration-testing, image-processing
- platform: windows, cli
- tags: steganography, steghide, password-cracking, brute-force, ctf-tools, stego, digital-forensics, wordlist-cracking, seed-bruteforce, linux, docker

## Member repositories
- RickdeJager/stegseek (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:15.115892+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:55:47.703642+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/RickdeJager/stegseek (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:15.115892+00:00, sha 50010c4d1be0)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.