ZM-CTC: Covert timing channel construction method based on zigzag matrix

Zheng, Jinhua; Li, Shupan; Hao, Shengang; Li, Yuanzhang

doi:10.1016/j.comcom.2021.10.040

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…It can be categorized into two types. One is a type to exploit the upper layer, including MAC layer protocol, such as in mobile network [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], in IEEE 802.11 WLAN [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], in IoT covert channel [24], [25], [26], [27], [28]. And, the other type is based on the physical layer which is commonly used in radio frequency (RF) signal characteristics.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most of all the mobile environment CTCs are based on Voice over Long-Term Evolution (VoLTE) packets. Zheng et al [11], Liang et al [12], Li et al [13], and Zhang et al [14], [15], [16] proposed various CTC algorithms called ZM-CTC, MSC-CTC, RPDCRC, VRCTC, NoP-GCTC, and SPCC. To communicate covertly in LTE, they used packet drop, silence period, interleaving ordering, and rearrangement for the VoLTE packets.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The covert channels are categorized as network covert channels and wireless covert channels (WCCs). A network covert channel is one that is built into the network layer (or upper protocol layer) [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], whereas a WCC is one that primarily exploits the MAC/physical-layer characteristics of wireless communication [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37]. Network covert channels are also divided into storage and time aspects depending on the type of resource shared in the legitimate channel [38].…”

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confidence: 99%

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Practical Covert Wireless Unidirectional Communication in IEEE 802.11 Environment

Seong

Kim

Jeon

et al. 2023

IEEE Internet Things J.

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Covert communications, or covert channels, are commonly exploited to establish a data exfiltration channel from an insider on a trusted network to a malicious receiver outside the network without using normal communication of the network. It is because the malicious receiver is an unauthorized user of the communication network and so he cannot communicate with any entity in the network. In this study, we construct a new covert wireless unidirectional communication mechanism in an IEEE 802.11 environment. Our covert communication is based on a covert timing channel exploiting the beacon interval of a given commercial-like AP. Because the wireless covert channel we proposed can be implemented only with firmware modification to the WLAN MAC protocol, it is very suitable for application in a real public AP environment. In order to dramatically reduce the chance of covert signals being detected by others, a new and simple covert data encoding scheme, called ping-pong covert timing channel (PPCTC), is proposed, and we show that the covertness of the PPCTC is excellent compared to the previous timing-based covert channels. Although this wireless covert communication is unidirectional communication, since PPCTC has recovery characteristics against consecutive 2-bit errors, stable communication is guaranteed. Furthermore, a covert frame structure is presented for providing the confidentiality and integrity of the information transmitted via our covert channel. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt. Index Terms-Covert AP, covert frame structure, covert timing channel (CTC), interpacket delay (IPD) CTC, packet loss recovery. I. INTRODUCTION A. BackgroundC OVERT communication is a type of attack to create an abnormal communication channel to transfer information to a malicious entity that is not supposed to be Manuscript

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Practical Covert Wireless Unidirectional Communication in IEEE 802.11 Environment

Seong

Kim

Jeon

et al. 2023

IEEE Internet Things J.

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“…Accordingly, the adversary neutralizes the CSC through data rewriting and format normalization. The packet rate is high for real‐time communication applications, and the covert channel based on stored content also performs well 35,36 . The CSC works well in video and multimedia applications when combined with stealthy and other data embedding technologies 37,38 .…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The packet rate is high for real-time communication applications, and the covert channel based on stored content also performs well. 35,36 The CSC works well in video and multimedia applications when combined with stealthy and other data embedding technologies. 37,38 The CTC, unlike the CSC, is based on fine-tuning traffic transmission patterns without modifying the precise content.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards robust and stealthy communication for wireless intelligent terminals

Chen

Qiu

Zhang

et al. 2022

Int J of Intelligent Sys

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Fifth‐generation (5G) wireless systems provide an opportunity for improving the existing Voice over Internet Protocol communication service's user experience. To mitigate the security risk of 5G data leakage, building covert channel is an alternative approach of providing confidential data transmission. Due to the high transmission rate of 5G, the interpacket intervals become small and derandomized, this caused the encoding phase of the covert timing channel imports relatively large modulation errors. rearranging is a widespread phenomenon that is occurred over the data communications. In this paper, we propose a rearrangement covert channel approach named Hybrid Variable‐length Packet Rearrangement Covert Timing Channel (HVPR‐CTC), which artificially chooses the delimiter packets and identification (ID) packets from the overt traffics, and encodes the packet sending order between adjacent delimiter packets according to a generated hybrid variable‐length codeword dictionary, and embeds the secret message by rearranging the sending order of the ID packets. The experiments demonstrate that the HVPR‐CTC scheme can effectively perform strategy adjustment: its minimum Location Square Deviation is 0.832 and minimum Swap Deviation is 139. the maximum throughput reaches 14.37 bps, and the optimal Bit Error Rate is 3.27% and 9.70% for low‐channel noise and high‐channel noise communication conditions, respectively.

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