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Network Security, Covert Channels, Steganography, Keylogger, Social Networks.

Identity theft through keyloggers has become very popular the last years. One of the most common ways to intercept and steal victim's data are to use a keylogger that transfers data back to the attacker. Covert keyloggers exist either as hardware or software. In the former case they are introduced as devices that can be attached to a computer (e.g. USB sticks), while in the latter case they try to stay invisible and undetectable as a software in the operating system. Writing a static keylogger which operates locally in victim's machine is not very complex. In contrast, the creation of covert communication between the attacker and the victim, and still remain undetectable is more sophisticated. In such a scenario we have to define how data can be delivered to the attacker and how we can make an efficient use of the channel that transfers the information over the network in order to stay undetectable. In this paper we propose a system based on Steganography that takes advantage of a seemingly innocuous Social Network (Tumblr) in order to avoid direct communication between the victim and the attacker. A core part of this study is the security analysis which is also discussed by presenting experimental results of the system and describing issues regarding surveillance resistance of the system as well as limitations.