What is a technique used to make stolen data difficult for hackers or hijackers to understand?

Obfuscation is a technique used to make data difficult to understand for unauthorized individuals, including hackers or hijackers. It involves modifying or disguising the original data in such a way that the meaning is obscured, while still preserving the data's functionality for legitimate users who know how to interpret it. This can include altering variable names in programming, encrypting content, or encoding information in a way that only intended recipients can decipher.

In the context of data security, employing obfuscation can serve as an additional layer of defense. Even if an attacker gains access to the data, the effectiveness of obfuscation makes it challenging for them to extract usable information without the appropriate context or keys needed to render the data intelligible.

Other options like PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) deal with secure communication and encryption of data but do not specifically focus on making the data unintelligible. A cipher is a method used to encrypt data, but it's typically a more structured and reversible process. Symmetrical encryption refers to a type of encryption technique where the same key is used for both encryption and decryption, which, while secure, does not inherently obfuscate the data in a manner that makes it difficult to understand without decryption key access.