Covert Channel Capacity

Millen, Jonathan K.

doi:10.1109/sp.1987.10013

Cited by 173 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Channel capacity as a security guarantee [6] has been studied for many different models of computation. Chatzikokolakis, Palamidessi and Panangaden use it to give a formula for anonymity analysis of protocols described by weakly symmetric matrices [23], based on the probabilistic anonymity approach by Bhargava and Palamidessi [24].…”

Section: State Of the Art And Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Maximum leakage is known in security theory as channel capacity, ranging over all attackers with the same observational power but different prior information on the secret. As said, no single attack can leak an amount of information higher than the system's channel capacity [6]. For a deterministic system, the leakage is the entropy of the observable behavior of the system conditioned by the attacker's behavior [7], and thus computing the channel capacity reduces to computing the behavior of the system that maximizes entropy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Maximizing entropy over Markov processes

Biondi

Legay

Nielsen

et al. 2014

Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming

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The channel capacity of a deterministic system with confidential data is an upper bound on the amount of bits of data an attacker can learn from the system. We encode all possible attacks to a system using a probabilistic specification, an Interval Markov Chain. Then the channel capacity computation reduces to finding a model of a specification with highest entropy.Entropy maximization for probabilistic process specifications has not been studied before, even though it is well known in Bayesian inference for discrete distributions. We give a characterization of global entropy of a process as a reward function, a polynomial algorithm to verify the existence of a system maximizing entropy among those respecting a specification, a procedure for the maximization of reward functions over Interval Markov Chains and its application to synthesize an implementation maximizing entropy.We show how to use Interval Markov Chains to model abstractions of deterministic systems with confidential data, and use the above results to compute their channel capacity. These results are a foundation for ongoing work on computing channel capacity for abstractions of programs derived from code.

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Section: State Of the Art And Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maximizing entropy over Markov processes

Biondi

Legay

Nielsen

et al. 2014

Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming

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“…However his definition is not aimed to measure leakage but to define it. Other pioneers on the use of information theory in the context of security are Dennings, McLean and Millen [9,8,20,21]. In recent years, a theoretical framework has been established based on Shannon's information theory to allow static, quantitative program analysis that provides an expectation of leakage in programs [15,16,17,23].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Optimum Leakage Principle for Analyzing Multi-threaded Programs

Chen

Malacaria

2010

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Abstract. Bellman's optimality principle is a method for solving problems where one needs to find best decisions one after another. The principle can be extended to assess the information leakage in multi-threaded programs, and is formalized into the optimum leakage principle hereby proposed in this paper. By modeling the state transitions in multithreaded programs, the principle is combined with information theory to assess the leakage in multi-threaded programs, as the result of an optimal policy. This offers a new perspective to measure the information leakage and enables to track the leakage at run-time. Examples are given to demonstrate the analysis process. Finally, efficient implementation of this methodology is also briefly discussed.

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“…Since [10], various techniques have been developed to both detect the existence of covert channels [11], or to disrupt them by minimizing their effective bandwidth [12]. A channel bandwidth is a measurement typically used to characterize the threat level each covert channel possesses.…”

Section: B Covert Channel and Steganographymentioning

confidence: 99%

An assessment of VoIP covert channel threats

Takahashi

Lee

2007

2007 Third International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communications Networks and the Workshops - SecureComm 2007

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Abstract-A VoIP covert channel is a mechanism that utilizes an IP phone conversation to illicitly transfer information across a network. In this paper, we present a model of VoIP covert channels that explains their main components and functions. We provide a performance evaluation framework, and quantify the threat to users. Our results demonstrate that covert channels represent an immediate threat to VoIP users. We discuss possible course of actions to detect attacks and mitigate the risk of information leakage.Index Terms-voice over IP, channel capacity, security of data, covert communication, watermarking, VoIP covert channel.

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Covert Channel Capacity

Cited by 173 publications

References 4 publications

Maximizing entropy over Markov processes

Maximizing entropy over Markov processes

The Optimum Leakage Principle for Analyzing Multi-threaded Programs

An assessment of VoIP covert channel threats

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