Journal of Shanghai Jiaotong University

• Automation Technique, Computer Technology • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Research of Covert Channels Based on Web Counters

HU Wen-tao, XUE Zhi, CHEN Nan   

  1. (School of Electronic, Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200240, China)
  • Received:2007-12-19 Revised:1900-01-01 Online:2008-10-28 Published:2008-10-28
  • Contact: XUE Zhi

Abstract: To avoid the limits of previous network storage covert channels which transmit covert information generally through packet head manipulation, a new idea was presented by using the plentiful, public Web counters for storage to construct a covert channel. Therefore, the encoder and the decoder do not need to establish a direct network connection, thus avoid the surveillances of many firewalls and intrusion detection system (IDS). A general noisy discrete memoryless channel (DMC) was modeled and the iteration algorithm of the DMC’s capacity was realized by C program language to compute the channel capacity. Several methods such as using multiple counters to increase rate were presented. One technique using pseudorandom sequence to scramble the sending information was used to enhance the covertness and the antinoise capability of the channel. The relationships between parameters and channel’s performance were analyzed through experiment. The result shows that the covert channel is feasible.

CLC Number: