Final answer:
Steganography is the practice of hiding messages within other types of data, such as images, audio files, or text. It involves encoding the hidden message in a way that is not easily detectable without the proper decoding method.
Step-by-step explanation:
Steganography is the practice of hiding messages within other types of data, such as images, audio files, or even text. It involves encoding the hidden message in a way that is not easily detectable without the proper decoding method.
For example, a common technique is to manipulate the least significant bits of the pixels in an image to encode the hidden message. The changes to the pixel values are usually subtle enough that they are not noticeable to the human eye, but can be recovered with the correct decoding method.
Steganography is often used for covert communication or for protecting sensitive information. It provides a way to hide the existence of a message, as opposed to cryptography, which focuses on making the contents of the message unreadable.