Steganography

Steganography is a process of hiding secret information within other inconspicuous information. In digital context, this process works by replacing superfluous data in benign text files, graphics and other types of digital files with the secret information, even images or encrypted text .

Like encryption, steganography helps to prevent others from viewing private information. It is useful in environments where encryption is not possible. More often, however, steganography is used in addition to encryption to ensure tight security, even if someone is able to decode an encrypted file.

There are both beneficial and malicious reasons to use steganography. As a benefit, it can used to create digital watermarks , to apply keywords to items searched in a database, and to protect private information. On the other hand, steganography has been used by terrorists to relay attack information, by people who use pornography to hide illegal images, and by thieves as a method to transmit stolen data.

Steganography, used in the digital context, requires special software  .