Steganography is defined as which of the following?

• A. The art and science of encrypting messages.
• B. The art and science of writing hidden messages.
• C. The practice of deleting information to hide activity.
• D. The technique of compressing data to save space.

Answer: (B)

Steganography involves hiding a message inside another medium so that observers don’t realize a secret message exists. The option that describes the art and science of writing hidden messages captures that idea by focusing on embedding the message within something ordinary. This differs from encryption, which aims to conceal the content of a message but not necessarily its presence; encryption can still signal that there is something to read. It also differs from deleting information to hide activity, which is about removing traces rather than embedding hidden data, and from compressing data to save space, which is about efficiency, not secrecy. A classic example is hiding a text message in the least significant bits of an image file so the image looks normal while carrying secret data.