What are the advantages and disadvantages of steganography?

Answer 1

The obvious advantage of steganography is that you can hide a secret message in another message, be it text, image, audio, or whatever media you decide to hide your secret in. The main problem with this is that either you or the person you're sending the "secret" message to need to be able to find the message. And if you can find it, then the bad guys you want to keep the message a secret from can find it, too.

Answer 2

The advantage of steganography, over cryptography alone, is that messages do not attract attention to themselves. Plainly visible encrypted messages-no matter how unbreakable-will arouse suspicion, and may in themselves be incriminating in countries where encryption is illegal.Therefore, whereas cryptography protects the contents of a message, steganography can be said to protect both messages and communicating parties.

However, it can also pose serious problems because it's difficult to detect. Network surveillance and monitoring systems will not flag messages or files that contain steganographic data. Therefore, if someone attempted to steal confidential data, they could conceal it within another file and send it in an innocent looking email.