The invention relates to concealing information within error correction codes of adaptive rate wireless communication systems. In some embodiments, the invention includes selecting a modulation and coding scheme with a more robust error correction capacity than needed by current channel conditions; encoding a hidden message with a pre-shared key that is known by a covert transmitter and a covert receiver, and after a standard message is encoded by a transmitting station of the wireless communication systems, replacing codeword parity bits of codewords in the encoded standard message with the encoded hidden message at designated locations. Before a receiving station of the wireless communication systems decodes the encoded standard message, a covert receiver extracts the embedded hidden message from the encoded standard message, replaces bit values of the embedded hidden message with zero at the designated locations, and decodes the extracted hidden message with the pre-shared key.