Steganography

2 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Steganography \Steg`a*nog"ra*phy\
     (st[e^]g`[.a]*n[o^]g"r[.a]*f[y^]), n. [Gr. stegano`s covered
     (fr. ste`gein to cover closely) + -graphy.]
     1. The art of writing in cipher, or in characters which are
        not intelligible except to persons who have the key;
        cryptography.


        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Specifically: The branch of cryptography in which messages
        are hidden inside other messages; -- used commonly for the
        process of hiding messages inside a computerized image
        file, as for example hiding the name and copyright notice
        of the owner of an image as protection against violation
        of the copyright.
        [PJC]

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  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
          (http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/chaffing.txt)}].
       
          (1998-07-13)