How to Store Ebooks in Instagram Reels and Other Covert Data Storage Tricks

Do you remember the video I posted last summer of YouTuber Benn Jordan where he “uploaded a picture of a bird to a bird and then downloaded the bird picture from the bird”? So cool. Jordan is back with more data encoding tricks in his latest video, There Are Files Stored in This Video (or: How To Hide Shit In Media).

Here’s his intro, which sounds completely bonkers but he demonstrates everything he says he’s going to:

This video is a very deep dive on all of the different ways that you can covertly send and receive data. I’m going to show you how to secretly store encrypted files in music that sounds completely normal to the human ear. I even made a little web app where somebody could paste a link to a Spotify song and it unlocks a completely secret separate audio stream. I’m going to show you how you can send and receive encrypted messages via ultrasound with no cell service or Wi-Fi required by turning your phone into a modem. We’re going to be exploiting Meta’s copyright protection to store ebooks inside Instagram videos. And I’m going to show you how I stored, hosted, and shared malware inside of a harmless Facebook photo of my [dog].

This is a pretty dense video and, I’m going to be honest, some of it went right over my head. But it is also genuinely mind-blowing and makes me want to watch a Sneakers-esque hackers movie where the characters do things like:

So if you ever want to send someone a selfie over PA system in a place with no Wi-Fi or cell service, I guess we’ve made that possible today.

If you want to play around with any of the stuff in the video, Jordan coded a bunch of demos and tools and put them up on his website.

I also ran across this recently: a system that can transfer data at 190 KB/s between two phones by pointing the camera of one phone at a QR video.

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