Hidden and Uncontrolled - On the Emergence of Network Steganographic Threats
It raises awareness about a growing cybersecurity problem for network security professionals, but is incremental as it primarily reviews and synthesizes existing knowledge without introducing new methods or data.
This paper addresses the emerging threat of network steganography, where secret information is hidden in network transmissions, and highlights its use in malware and other malicious activities like data leakage, while discussing challenges in countering it and outlining future research directions.
Network steganography is the art of hiding secret information within innocent network transmissions. Recent findings indicate that novel malware is increasingly using network steganography. Similarly, other malicious activities can profit from network steganography, such as data leakage or the exchange of pedophile data. This paper provides an introduction to network steganography and highlights its potential application for harmful purposes. We discuss the issues related to countering network steganography in practice and provide an outlook on further research directions and problems.