steganography

steganography

Hiding a message within an image, audio or video file. Used as an alternate to encryption, it takes advantage of unused bits within the file structure or bits that are mostly undetectable if altered. A steganographic message rides secretly to its destination, unlike encrypted messages, which although undecipherable without the decryption key, can be identified as encrypted. For a white paper on the subject written by Neil F. Johnson of George Mason University, visit www.jjtc.com/Steganography. See ScramDisk.

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(security)

steganography - Hiding a secret message within a larger one in such a way that others can not discern the presence or contents of the hidden message. For example, a message might be hidden within an image by changing the least significant bits to be the message bits. [Chaffing and Winnowing: Confidentiality without Encryption, Ronald L. Rivest, MIT Lab for Computer Science, 1998-03-22].