Which term best describes the practice of concealing the existence of a secret message?

• A. Steganography
• B. Encryption
• C. Compression
• D. Authentication

Answer: (A)

Concealing the existence of a secret message is steganography. The idea is to hide a message inside another medium so that observers don’t even notice that a secret message is present. Think of embedding information in the least-significant bits of an image or in the metadata of a file, where the carrier looks ordinary while carrying hidden data. The goal is about concealment of the presence itself, not just the unreadability of the content. By contrast, encryption hides the content but not the fact that a secret message is being used; it makes the message unreadable but typically signals that something secret exists. Compression and authentication serve different purposes—reducing data size and verifying identity, respectively.