Covert Channel over Network Time Protocol

Ameri, Aidin; Johnson, Daryl

doi:10.1145/3058060.3058082

Cited by 9 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Covert Communication and Its Game Method. Covert communication can be divided into storage type and time type, which are usually based on first-order morphological parameters and second-order statistical characteristics [14][15][16][17]. The covert storage channel [18,19] takes the object of the protocol as a symbol to transmit covert information, such as unused or reserved elements in data packets, data frames, and data segments.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive Covert Traffic Synthesis Method Based on Generative Adversarial Network

Tang

Wang

et al. 2021

Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

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In the intelligent era of human-computer symbiosis, the use of machine learning method for covert communication confrontation has become a hot topic of network security. The existing covert communication technology focuses on the statistical abnormality of traffic behavior and does not consider the sensory abnormality of security censors, so it faces the core problem of lack of cognitive ability. In order to further improve the concealment of communication, a game method of “cognitive deception” is proposed, which is aimed at eliminating the anomaly of traffic in both behavioral and cognitive dimensions. Accordingly, a Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Network of Covert Channel (WCCGAN) model is established. The model uses the constraint sampling of cognitive priors to construct the constraint mechanism of “functional equivalence” and “cognitive equivalence” and is trained by a dynamic strategy updating learning algorithm. Among them, the generative module adopts joint expression learning which integrates network protocol knowledge to improve the expressiveness and discriminability of traffic cognitive features. The equivalent module guides the discriminant module to learn the pragmatic relevance features through the activity loss function of traffic and the application loss function of protocol for end-to-end training. The experimental results show that WCCGAN can directly synthesize traffic with comprehensive concealment ability, and its behavior concealment and cognitive deception are as high as 86.2% and 96.7%, respectively. Moreover, the model has good convergence and generalization ability and does not depend on specific assumptions and specific covert algorithms, which realizes a new paradigm of cognitive game in covert communication.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive Covert Traffic Synthesis Method Based on Generative Adversarial Network

Tang

Wang

et al. 2021

Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing

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“…The design and the implementation of covert channels over communication networks represent the most prolific field. According to [15], all the protocols in the TCP/IP stack have been considered in setting up covert channels. In [12,16], vulnerabilities in the headers of the network protocols are used to set up storage-based covert channels.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covert Channels-Based Stealth Attacks in Industry 4.0

Alcaraz

Bernieri

Pascucci

et al. 2019

IEEE Systems Journal

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Industry 4.0 advent opens several cyber-threats scenarios originally designed for classic information technology, drawing the attention to serious risks for the modern industrial control networks. To cope with this problem, in this paper we address the security issues related to covert channels applied to industrial networks, identifying the new vulnerability points when information technologies converge with operational technologies such as edge computing infrastructures. Specifically, we define two signaling strategies where we exploit the Modbus/TCP protocol as target to set up a covert channel. Once the threat channel is established, passive and active offensive methodologies are further exploited by implementing and testing them on a real Industrial Internet of Things testbed. The experimental results highlight the potential damage of such specific threats and the easy extrapolation of the attacks to other types of channels in order to show the new risks for the Industry 4.0. Related to this, we discuss some countermeasures offering an overview of possible mitigation and defensive measures.

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“…A CTC can leak covert message via modulating target timing behavior. Most CTCs are established over end-to-end communication, like HTTP, 13,34 secure shell (SSH), network time protocol (NTP), 35 or other TCP-based protocols. 36 With the rising popularity of instant message applications, CTCs are proposed for applications like Skype, 10 WeChat, and others.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

An end-to-end covert channel via packet dropout for mobile networks

Tan

Chen

et al. 2018

International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks

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Voice over Long-Term Evolution enables reliable transmission among enormous Internet of Things devices, by providing end-to-end quality of service for Internet protocol-based services such as audio, video, and multimedia messaging. The research of covert timing channels aims at transmitting covert message stealthily to the receiver using variations of timing behavior. Existing approaches mainly modulate the covert message into inter-packet delays of overt traffic, which are not suitable for Voice over Long-Term Evolution, since most of the inter-packet delays of Voice over Long-Term Evolution traffic are of regular distribution, and any modification on inter-packet delays is easy to be detected. To address the issue, in this work, we propose a novel covert timing channel for the video stream in Voice over Long-Term Evolution, which modulates the covert message by deliberately dropping out video packets. Based on the twodimensional mapping matrix, the blocks of covert message are mapped into dropout-packet sequence numbers. To recover the covert message, the receiver retrieves the sequence numbers of lost packets and identifies them to be translated into blocks of the covert message. To evaluate our scheme, the simulations with different packet loss rates are conducted to validate the undetectability, throughput, and robustness, finally, the results show that this scheme is effective and reliable.

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Covert Channel over Network Time Protocol

Cited by 9 publications

References 8 publications

Cognitive Covert Traffic Synthesis Method Based on Generative Adversarial Network

Cognitive Covert Traffic Synthesis Method Based on Generative Adversarial Network

Covert Channels-Based Stealth Attacks in Industry 4.0

An end-to-end covert channel via packet dropout for mobile networks

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