Packet Steganography Using IP ID

Abstract

Packet steganography is a secret mechanism that can be used to leak significant information across a network in a manner that violates security policy and it can be difficult to detect. The huge amount of data and vast number of different protocols in the internet seems ideal as a cover for secret messages. In this research, a proposed method is suggested for packet steganography system. The proposed method uses the TCP/IP protocol header field to cover secret message. The secret characters are encoded to ASCII code before merged in IP ID field using specially designed embedding / extracting algorithms in order to make the system more complex to be defeated by attackers. Results are tested successfully with secret message of (42) character, and cover of (100) raw packets.