Abstract: A data security system which produces a steganographic selection key by using an encryption key as both the key and as the data to be encrypted. First an encryption key is copied multiple times to form a data block which is then encrypted using the same key. The resulting ciphertext is then used as a selection key to select locations in a secondary data stream. These selected locations are then modified with the original data to be encoded. Restoration of the original data is accomplished by using the selection key to locate the modified areas of the data stream, extracting the data found there, and then decrypting the extracted data with the cyphertext.