Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. 7th International ICST Conference, SecureComm 2011, London, UK, September 7-9, 2011, Revised Selected Papers

Research Article

Behavioral Mimicry Covert Communication

Download
357 downloads
  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-642-31909-9_8,
        author={Seyed Ahmadzadeh and Gordon Agnew},
        title={Behavioral Mimicry Covert Communication},
        proceedings={Security and Privacy in Communication Networks. 7th International ICST Conference, SecureComm 2011, London, UK, September 7-9, 2011, Revised Selected Papers},
        proceedings_a={SECURECOMM},
        year={2012},
        month={10},
        keywords={Covert communication information hiding wireless security},
        doi={10.1007/978-3-642-31909-9_8}
    }
    
  • Seyed Ahmadzadeh
    Gordon Agnew
    Year: 2012
    Behavioral Mimicry Covert Communication
    SECURECOMM
    Springer
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-31909-9_8
Seyed Ahmadzadeh1,*, Gordon Agnew1
  • 1: University of Waterloo
*Contact email: ahmadzdh@uwaterloo.ca

Abstract

In this paper, the use of structural behavior of communication protocols (e.g., CSMA) in designing new covert channels is investigated. In this way, the covert transmitter adopts the communication protocol architecture to control its overt traffic flow yet with different parameters that give it enough freedom to embed the covert message in its overt traffic. A salient feature of this scheme is that its rate increases in proportion with the overt capacity of the system. In addition, the paper presents a new covert channel for the wireless environment that mimics the structural behavior of CSMA protocol. The parameters of the proposed scheme are optimized in order to maximize the channel rate, stealthiness and robustness. Finally, the performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed from security, reliability and communication rate point of view.