• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems
    Monthly Online Journal (eISSN: 1976-7277)

Designing Rich-Secure Network Covert Timing Channels Based on Nested Lattices


Abstract

As the youngest branch of information hiding, network covert timing channels conceal the existence of secret messages by manipulating the timing information of the overt traffic. The popular model-based framework for constructing covert timing channels always utilizes cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the inter-packet delays (IPDs) to modulate secret messages, whereas discards high-order statistics of the IPDs completely. The consequence is the vulnerability to high-order statistical tests, e.g., entropy test. In this study, a rich security model of covert timing channels is established based on IPD chains, which can be used to measure the distortion of multi-order timing statistics of a covert timing channel. To achieve rich security, we propose two types of covert timing channels based on nested lattices. The CDF of the IPDs is used to construct dot-lattice and interval-lattice for quantization, which can ensure the cell density of the lattice consistent with the joint distribution of the IPDs. Furthermore, compensative quantization and guard band strategy are employed to eliminate the regularity and enhance the robustness, respectively. Experimental results on real traffic show that the proposed schemes are rich-secure, and robust to channel interference, whereas some state-of-the-art covert timing channels cannot evade detection under the rich security model.


Statistics

Show / Hide Statistics

Statistics (Cumulative Counts from December 1st, 2015)
Multiple requests among the same browser session are counted as one view.
If you mouse over a chart, the values of data points will be shown.


Cite this article

[IEEE Style]
W. Liu, G. Liu, X. Ji, J. Zhai, Y. Dai, "Designing Rich-Secure Network Covert Timing Channels Based on Nested Lattices," KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 1866-1883, 2019. DOI: 10.3837/tiis.2019.04.007.

[ACM Style]
Weiwei Liu, Guangjie Liu, Xiaopeng Ji, Jiangtao Zhai, and Yuewei Dai. 2019. Designing Rich-Secure Network Covert Timing Channels Based on Nested Lattices. KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems, 13, 4, (2019), 1866-1883. DOI: 10.3837/tiis.2019.04.007.

[BibTeX Style]
@article{tiis:22065, title="Designing Rich-Secure Network Covert Timing Channels Based on Nested Lattices", author="Weiwei Liu and Guangjie Liu and Xiaopeng Ji and Jiangtao Zhai and Yuewei Dai and ", journal="KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems", DOI={10.3837/tiis.2019.04.007}, volume={13}, number={4}, year="2019", month={April}, pages={1866-1883}}