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Network steganography is the art of hiding secret information within innocent network transmissions. Recent findings indicate that novel malware is increasingly using network steganography. Similarly, other malicious activities can profit from network steganography, such as data leakage or the exchange of pedophile data. This paper provides an introduction to network steganography and highlights its po-tential application for harmful purposes. We discuss the issues related to countering network steganog-raphy in practice and provide an outlook on further research directions and problems.