- Jun 6, 2003
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I am part of a law research team at the The College of William & Mary Law School. Each year, we carry out various lab trials to show the latest uses of technology in court rooms. This year, we are focusing on detecting digital forgeries, specifically email.
While I am pretty knowledgeable when it comes to technology, I am by no means a security expert, and was hoping there might be a few AT members that could offer me some guidance.
Basically, as part of our trial, we want to show that a third-party can send a forged email from his/her own computer that would look like an original email being sent from a target user's machine. I am well aware of ease in which email header's can be altered, IP and MAC addresses can be spoofed, etc. It would be pretty simple for an attacker to remotely connect to a target machine and send emails from that machine. However, we want to take it further than that and assume that the attacker does not have access to a user's machine, either physically or over a network (at least not at the time that the email is sent). So, the email must originate on the attacker's machine and be sent through whatever connection he is using at the time.
Before I start doing any in-depth research and getting third-parties to help with the trial, here's what I want to know: is it reasonably possible for a savvy third-party attacker to send a forged email from his/her own computer that would look like an original email being sent from a target user's machine at all points along the delivery path (i.e., as the message is traversed through various servers, ISPs, etc.)?
I am not looking for any details about how it would be done or anything like that. I just want to see how far we can push this trial while remaining realistic. Thanks in advance!
While I am pretty knowledgeable when it comes to technology, I am by no means a security expert, and was hoping there might be a few AT members that could offer me some guidance.
Basically, as part of our trial, we want to show that a third-party can send a forged email from his/her own computer that would look like an original email being sent from a target user's machine. I am well aware of ease in which email header's can be altered, IP and MAC addresses can be spoofed, etc. It would be pretty simple for an attacker to remotely connect to a target machine and send emails from that machine. However, we want to take it further than that and assume that the attacker does not have access to a user's machine, either physically or over a network (at least not at the time that the email is sent). So, the email must originate on the attacker's machine and be sent through whatever connection he is using at the time.
Before I start doing any in-depth research and getting third-parties to help with the trial, here's what I want to know: is it reasonably possible for a savvy third-party attacker to send a forged email from his/her own computer that would look like an original email being sent from a target user's machine at all points along the delivery path (i.e., as the message is traversed through various servers, ISPs, etc.)?
I am not looking for any details about how it would be done or anything like that. I just want to see how far we can push this trial while remaining realistic. Thanks in advance!
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