NDLI: Disrupting and Preventing Late-Packet Covert Communication Using Sequence Number Tracking

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	Rezaei, F. Hempel, M. Dongming Peng Sharif, H.
Copyright Year	2013
Description	Author affiliation: Comput. & Electron. Eng. Dept., Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln, Omaha, NE, USA (Rezaei, F.; Hempel, M.; Dongming Peng; Sharif, H.)
Abstract	Modern covert channel communication is the art of hiding secret information in legitimate network traffic in a way that cannot normally be detected by anyone other than the intended receiver. It is growing in its presence and sophistication. This type of communication enables the distribution of malicious or sensitive information and poses a significant network security problem to individuals, organizations, and governments. One popular method of covert communication in RTP streams is the transmission of one or more packets after significantly delaying them. As a result, any normal receiver will discard them as arriving late, whereas covert receivers successfully receive them to extract their payload subverted by the covert transmitter. This provides a covert channel method with significant throughput potential and thus high risk. In this paper we propose a method that can restrict this type of covert communication and prevent the distribution of secret information. Our proposed method takes advantage of buffering the sequence number of the received packets and thus detecting late packets, allowing it to discard them instead of delivering them to the receiver. Therefore, the covert receiver will not be able to intercept and observe these intentionally delayed packets, nor extracting the covert message. The in-depth analysis and our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective and capable of preventing this type of covert communication.
Sponsorship	IEEE Commun. Soc.
Starting Page	599
Ending Page	604
File Size	300320
Page Count	6
File Format	PDF
ISBN	9780769551241
DOI	10.1109/MILCOM.2013.108
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	2013-11-18
Publisher Place	USA
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Receivers Delays Jitter Protocols Payloads Packet loss RTP Covert Communication Information Hiding Late Packets Sequence Number
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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