Reference

Steganography & machine-readable text glossary

Concise definitions used throughout FugitiveAI. For canonical identity, relationships, and resource mappings, explore the Concept Graph.

Acrostic
A hidden-message construction in which selected initial letters or words form a secondary message.
Answer hash
A one-way server-side representation used by FugitiveAI to verify answers without shipping the expected answer to browser JavaScript.
Base64
A reversible binary-to-text encoding that represents bytes using a restricted printable alphabet.
Carrier
The visible or ordinary-looking artifact that contains a hidden payload.
Code point
The numeric value assigned to a Unicode character, commonly written as U+ followed by hexadecimal digits.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets, the language browsers use to control presentation and layout.
DOM
Document Object Model, the browser-accessible tree representation of parsed HTML.
Encoding
A reversible mapping between representations of information that does not inherently provide secrecy.
Glyph
The visible shape used to render a character.
Hidden message
Information intentionally placed in a carrier so it is not immediately obvious in the ordinary view.
HTML comment
Source text delimited by <!-- and --> that browsers do not render as ordinary body content.
Human-visible
Information normally perceived from the rendered artifact without inspecting internal representation.
Invisible Unicode
Unicode characters that are present in a string but do not produce an ordinary visible glyph or primarily control formatting.
Machine-readable
Information that software can parse or recover from bytes, code points, source, metadata, structure, or another formal representation.
Metadata
Structured information that describes an artifact rather than forming its primary visible content.
Normalization
A transformation that converts text into a standardized Unicode representation such as NFC or NFKC.
Non-breaking space
U+00A0, a space-like character that prevents an ordinary line break at its position.
Payload
The information being concealed or transmitted through a carrier.
Steganalysis
The analysis of artifacts for evidence of hidden-information channels.
Steganography
The practice of concealing a message inside another artifact so the hidden communication is less obvious.
Stegotext
Text that carries a hidden steganographic payload.
Unicode
A standard assigning code points to characters and control functions across writing systems.
UTF-8
A variable-length byte encoding for Unicode code points.
WORD JOINER
U+2060, an invisible Unicode format character that inhibits line breaking at its position.
ZERO WIDTH SPACE
U+200B, an invisible Unicode format character that can indicate a potential line-break opportunity.
Word-length parity
A structural text channel that maps odd and even alphabetic word lengths to binary states under a defined segmentation and counting rule.
Synonym-choice steganography
A linguistic hidden-information method that maps curated context-appropriate lexical alternatives to symbols such as binary 0 and 1 under a shared codebook and carrier order.
Punctuation-choice steganography
A text hidden-information method that maps predefined punctuation alternatives at known carrier positions to symbols such as binary 0 and 1.
Contraction-choice steganography
A linguistic hidden-information method that maps curated full forms and contractions at known carrier positions to symbols such as binary 0 and 1 under a shared codebook and normalization rule.
Active/passive voice steganography
A linguistic hidden-information method that maps curated active-voice and passive-voice realizations at known carrier positions to symbols such as binary 0 and 1.
Sentence-order steganography
A linguistic hidden-information method that maps predefined orderings of the same textual units, such as A→B and B→A, to symbols such as binary 0 and 1.
Sentence-length parity steganography
A linguistic hidden-information method that maps odd and even counted lengths of predefined carrier sentences to symbols such as binary 0 and 1 under an explicit segmentation and counting rule.
Spelling-variant steganography
A linguistic hidden-information method that maps predefined, context-reviewed orthographic variants to symbols such as binary 0 and 1 under a shared codebook and carrier order.
Homologous control
A matched control produced under substantially the same conditions as a questioned artifact or process so the suspected channel or tested factor is the main intended difference.
Causal intervention
A deliberate change to the suspected information-carrying variable used to test whether receiver behavior changes as predicted while relevant ordinary content remains controlled.
Representation differential
A reproducible difference between two valid representations of the same artifact, such as rendered, parsed, Unicode, accessibility, metadata, or machine-ingestion views.
Verified channel
A FugitiveAI confidence label for a channel whose documented extraction rule reproducibly recovers structured information under controlled testing; it does not by itself prove receiver use or malicious intent.
Transformation profile
The observed pattern of whether a suspected machine-readable state survives, degrades, or disappears under controlled changes such as normalization, rewriting, reordering, or reserialization.