Systems and methods for protecting header fields in a message

摘要

Embodiments of the systems and methods described herein facilitate the transmitting, receiving, and processing of encoded messages wherein the header fields in the message header are protected. In one embodiment, the contents of the header fields to be protected are inserted into the message body as one or more additional lines of text, for example, prior to encoding and transmitting the message to a message recipient. Upon receipt of the message, the message recipient processes the encoded message such that the contents of the protected header fields can be extracted from the message body. Accordingly, by inserting the contents of the header fields to be protected into the message body, the header fields may be protected using existing standards and protocols for facilitating secure message communication.

主权项

1. A method of transmitting an encoded message from a computing device to a message recipient device, the message comprising a message header and a message body, the message header comprising a plurality of header fields, the method comprising:
the computing device inserting original content of one or more header fields to be protected into the message body prior to transmission of the message to the message recipient device; modifying the one or more header fields to be protected to include, instead of the original content, one or more respective text notices that indicate that the original content is protected, thereby generating a modified message header; encoding the message body which includes the original content of the one or more header fields to be protected; and after encoding the message body, transmitting the message comprising the modified message header and the encoded message body to the message recipient device, such that when the message is received and processed by the message recipient device, the processing including decoding of the encoded message body, the original content of the one or more header fields to be protected is extracted from the decoded message body and inserted back into the one or more header fields of the message header, and when the message is displayed in a user interface of the message recipient device, the user interface is displayed with indicia indicating that the one or more header fields to be protected in the message header have been protected.