Steganography is the art and science of hiding information by embedding messages within other cover messages or files like images, audio, or video. It comes from Greek words meaning "covered writing" and aims to conceal the very existence of messages to all but the intended recipient. Common steganography techniques include least significant bit encoding, discrete wavelet transforms, masking, and discrete cosine transforms to hide messages in digital files without detectable changes to the cover file. However, confidentiality relies on the algorithms remaining secret, and password leaks or unauthorized access by hackers could enable dangerous uses if the technique falls into the wrong hands.