Steganography

Overview
Steganography is a way to hide messages. The messages are supposed to be seen by only the sender and recipient. They are hidden in such a way that they also appear non-existent to anyone else. They generally appear as something completely different, or simply invisible, to someone who the message is not intended for.

In Greek, Steganography means “concealed writing.” The first use of concealed writing was noted in 1499 by Johannes Trithemius. A book he wrote on steganography was disguised as a magic book. This had been an example of early written steganography. Another example may be the geoglyphs that are in Peru. These can only be read from the air, above them. Another example would be “microdots.” These were used by the Nazis in WWII. They were images that could only be seen with intense magnification. In Viet Nam, soldiers who were captured would often make gestures in the photos that translated into different messages. Since these early stages of steganography, ways of communicating hidden messages have become much more complicated. They have moved to computers, for example. Hidden messages can exist in websites, photographs, video files, music files, and more. For more information about the history of steganography and where it is today, click here.

Four types of modern steganography are using images, audio, video, and documents to hide messages. To use image steganography on a computer, it is possible to use the different colors in the image to hide a different image or message. Audio steganography can hide messages by adding different noises to the file. Video steganography is possible by adding hidden images to different parts of the video. Finally, document steganography involves adding “white space and tabs” to the writing.Hiding messages using these strategies is not that difficult. All it really takes is some creativity, and it is possible to do a fairly good job of hiding a message.This is both interesting, and somewhat scary at the same time. It is interesting because of how easy it is to communicate messages to people and have only them know what is being said. However, it is also scary because it means that there could be messages all around us that we don't see unless we were intended to.

There are many sites online that allow people to access software that will help them hide messages in different types of files. Steganography is something anyone can use. The concept of steganography is a very interesting one to consider because of what it can do, and what it means for communication.

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