Sending an email from a fake address

Hi everyone,

I'm sorry, but I have forgotten the proper term for this. I remember using an online shell account to do this, but basically what it is is sending an email but as if it were from another address. In the attachment provided, I have inputted my email address into the online forums I maintain - and whenever a group email is sent out, it comes from my address (yet I never inputted my password). I'm pretty sure it's just altering the email's header, but I really can't remember how I ever did it. I'm just interested, and would like to find out more about the topic. :D

Also, isn't that a really easy way to scam? I mean, if you found out someone's email address, you could send some pretty horrible things as if they were from that person rather than yourself. I know that your IP address could be traced and stuff, but it's still quite dangerous, isn't it?

Thanks!

It's called spoofing and it's a very simple thing to do. It can be an easy way to scam especially when digital signatures and message signing aren't in use.

Alot of mail applications and api's will allow you to send email with whatever you like in the 'from' field.

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Also, isn't that a really easy way to scam? I mean, if you found out someone's email address, you could send some pretty horrible things as if they were from that person rather than yourself. I know that your IP address could be traced and stuff, but it's still quite dangerous, isn't it?

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Pick a couple random pieces of spam, cut and paste the header into Sam Spade's email parser and you will see they are all forged, and maybe the one from your girlfriend asking for you debit card PIN is too . . . :confused: :D. Its just a weakness of SMTP.

Read more here :

http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/email_spoofing.html

And at a plethora of other googleicious links.

Ahh...email spoofing! Thank you Juridian for that extra bit of info, and hesperus for the link to that email parser! Actually, I filter my email pretty heavily, so I hardly ever get any junk mail!

So I guess that's the problem with web based email accounts - (most of the time) you can't use digital signatures or other methods of security. And do mail programs really allow you to change the "From" field? Hm, I guess I don't use them often enough! Hehe!

Talking about email apps, I'm pretty sure Google allows POP3 and SMTP access via external programs...Thunderbird here I come! Anyway, thanks guys for that info! ;)

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Originally posted here by J_K9
So I guess that's the problem with web based email accounts - (most of the time) you can't use digital signatures or other methods of security. And do mail programs really allow you to change the "From" field? Hm, I guess I don't use them often enough!

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Actually, that's not quite correct. A digital signature is tied to a
name and or address, but it can still be used with an email web form.
This post, for example, has been digitally signed by my PGP key (for
email...so it's in *violation* of its intended use...not really
accurate, but the right idea.) You can use some digital signatures
and some applications with webmail, depending on the applications and
cert's you are using.

The problem with spoofing email is exclusive to a digital signature.
It is common practice for some listserv's and forums to send
announcement "from you" based on your account. In reality, as
*Juridian* and *Hesperus* have said, the From address is
spoofed...but not necessarily with the intent to defraud...just to
make things conform with their idea of how it should be done.

What digital signatures can do is help a recipient verify the sender
is legitimately who they claim to be, regardless of "From"
address...although this is more involved than I will go into here.

To learn more, keywords to search on would be "pki" which stands for
"Public Key Infrastructure", "digital certificate", and
"nonrepudiation" might even get you some good hits. I bet there's a
PGP tutorial; if not, I'll get busy writing.

Hope this helps some more.


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 8.0

iQA/AwUBQxS2scl4AKdBhwmpEQJnHwCeLyl7U6ETQQztqJr9DS+fYXeHaaoAoLfn
5+tyKya2jgPprvHq10idKxVa
=8Ksy
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Thanks zencoder for that! I really appreciate it! I'm now going to go and look up some of the stuff you mentioned... ;) I've used PGP before to encrypt files and stuff, but I've never really understood Public Keys and what on earth they were (although that's slightly different! Hehe!). Well, now's my time to learn about them, digital signatures, and everything else mentioned! Thanks again! :D

Zencoder a tutorial would help alot of people including me .

Since there are so many PGP programs outthere and the Public key confuses alot of people.

One of the best explanations of how public private keys work was from a citrix Training session I took years ago.

Goes like this (All from memory so it might not be exact)

Jim wants to ask Sally to the dance on Friday.
Jim and Sally only share one class (math) and Billy sits between Jim and Sally. Billy "likes" Sally - no love lost between Jim and Billy

So during math, Jim puts his open pad lock in his lunch box and asks Billy to pass is to Sally.

Billy opens the lunch box, sees the open lock, and continues to pass it on to Sally.

Sally opens the lunch box, puts her open pad lock in and locks the lunch box with Jim's pad lock. Then passes the box back through Billy to Jim.

Jim opens the lunch box (now locked with a pad lock that only he has the combo to) puts in his open pad lock and a note asking Sally to the dance. Then he locks the lunch box with Sally's pad lock and passes it back through Billy.

Sally opens the lunch box, writes her answer, puts in her open pad lock, locks the lunch box with Jims lock and passes it back to Jim.

Jim opens the lock, reads the reply, puts Sally's open pad lock back in the lunch box and passes back to Sally. On the way back, Billy looks in the lunch box and sees the open lock then gives the lunch box to Sally.

Sally takes out her lock and passes the empty lunch box to Jim - Which, of course, Billy looks in on the way to Jim.


edit: pasting from word did a double entry. ???

thats suppoused to be an easy description oO

Bloody Hell,

dinowuff,

BAH!!! Sacrilege!!!

Jim, Sally and Billy!!???

Everyone knows it's Bob, Alice and Eve... :p

Nice explanation, anyway...

-Wiski

Good stuff Dino. Although I got it right off...apparently some others didn't quite catch it as well. ;)

A for effort though.

I'll consider a tutorial and see what we don't already have; one problem is, PKI, PKE, and the PGP program are not the same. PKI is the idea of an infrastructure that makes S/MIME and other certificates possible. PGP is an actual program. It's like writing a tutorial for network vulnerability assessments. Do you write it on the general practice and theory of scanning, probing, etc., or do you write it on Nessus?

I'll do some thinking and maybe write something up.

that would be really cool, its all new to me and im sure a lot of people. ill definately be watching for that tutorial
props on the explanation dinowuff :)

Hey dinowuff, that explanation ROCKED! ;) I'm not really sure what Billy liking the girl had to do with it, but it was still very easy to understand! ;-D

Thanks all for the replies, and please let me know if you write a tut, zencoder! :D

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Originally posted here by J_K9
Hey dinowuff, that explanation ROCKED! ;) I'm not really sure what Billy liking the girl had to do with it, but it was still very easy to understand! ;-D

Thanks all for the replies, and please let me know if you write a tut, zencoder! :D

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Actually, Billy represents the parties that may see a communication between the end points. Anyone who you do not want to share the message with. "In the cloud" or "on the wire", if you will. In the first exchange, he opened the lunchbox to represent how the message contents are not secure without a lock (lock==encryption).

/* Edit */

Tutorial...more of a description, really...is in the works.