  In 1998 Crandall introduced a method based on coding theory to secretly embed
a message in a digital support such as an image. Later Fridrich et al. improved
this method to minimize the distortion introduced by the embedding; a process
called wet paper. However, as previously emphasized in the literature, this
method can fail during the embedding step. Here we find sufficient and
necessary conditions to guarantee a successful embedding by studying the dual
distance of a linear code. Since these results are essentially of combinatorial
nature, they can be generalized to systematic codes, a large family containing
all linear codes. We also compute the exact number of solutions and point out
the relationship between wet paper codes and orthogonal arrays.
