Imagine that you want to send a secret message to your colleague at the CIA. You can ___1___ it to prevent counterspies from reading it. But they'll still know you were sending some sort of message. There's a better option—steganography—which means “___2___.” You tuck your secret away in an unexpected place, like an MP3 or a photo file, to conceal the fact you even shared any information at all.

But you can't hide much in those file types without it being suspiciously large. Executable files, aka applications, on the other hand, come in all sizes—making them an ideal place to ___3___ lots of data. So two computer scientists created an algorithm that packages your encrypted data into an executable file of your choice. Then it ___4___ a new program that works just like the original—except that your secret cargo is inside. The research is in the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions. [Rajesh Kumar Tiwari and G. Sahoo, "A Novel Steganographic Methodology for High-Capacity Data Hiding in Executable Files"]

Ideally, this ___5___ would keep your data safe from prying eyes. Until somebody notices that you're sharing an inordinate number of executable files.
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