An asynchronous covert channel using spam

AbstractCurrent Internet e-mail facilities are built onto the foundation of standard rules and protocols, which usually allow a considerable amount of “freedom” to their designers. Each of these standards has been defined based on a number of vendor specific implementations, in order to provide common inter-working procedures for cross-vendor communication. Thus, a lot of optional and redundant information is being exchanged during e-mail sessions, which is available to implement versatile covert channel mechanisms.This work exploits this possibility by presenting a simple but effective steganographic scheme that can be used to deploy robust secret communication through spam e-mails. This s…