Steganography

Hiding a message so that nobody knows there is one, as distinct from making it unreadable.

Concealment rather than encipherment: a message in the first letters of lines, in the spacing of a text, in the bits of an image. Cicada 3301's puzzles used it heavily, and it is one account of the Voynich Manuscript (that the visible text is cover and the message lies in some feature of it). It is hard to rule out, because a message that is not found might be hidden better or not be there at all.

Where it comes up

Voynich Manuscript

The text has no plaintext; it was composed freely in a personal, language-like idiom, as in glossolalia or automatic writing.

Made-up text, written freely

Cicada 3301

Enlightenment awaits." Its hidden text, extracted with the OutGuess steganography tool, led through a book code keyed to Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" to further Tor sites .

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). Steganography [Concept CPT0DECW0855NN3]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/CPT0DECW0855NN3

@misc{mysteriesdept_cpt0decw0855nn3,
  title     = {Steganography},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Concept, catalog key CPT0DECW0855NN3},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/CPT0DECW0855NN3}
}