Data Hiding in TCP/IP Protocol Suite By Covert Channels
A more specific approach is adopted by Rowland. Focusing on the IP and TCP headers of TCP/IP Protocol suite, Rowland devises proper encoding and decoding techniques by utilizing the IP identification field, the TCP initial sequence number and acknowledge sequence number fields. These techniques are implemented in a simple utility written for Linux systems running version 2.0 kernels.
Rowland simply provides a proof of concept of existence as well as exploitation of covert channels in TCP/IP protocol suite. This work can, thus, be regarded as a practical breakthrough in this specific area. The adopted encoding and decoding techniques are more pragmatic as compared to previously proposed work. These techniques are analyzed considering security mechanisms like firewall network address translation.
However, the non-detectability of these covert communication techniques is questionable. For instance, a case where sequence number field of TCP header is manipulated, the encoding scheme is adopted such that every time the same alphabet is covertly communicated, it is encoded with the same sequence number.
Moreover, the usages of sequence number field as well as the acknowledgment field cannot be made specific to the ASCII coding of English language alphabet as proposed, since both fields take in to account the receipt of data bytes pertaining to specific network packet(s).
The Data Hiding in TCP/IP Protocol suit by covert channels have following important aspects:
- Identify the existence of covert channels in a network environment.
- Point to devising satisfying techniques of embedding and extraction processes at the source and destination, respectively.
- Do not consider the effect of employing covert communications network as a whole.
Read more about this topic: Covert Channel
Famous quotes containing the words data, hiding, covert and/or channels:
“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it—all my life.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“She had never known before how much the country meant to her. The chirping of the insects in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“There was the murdered corpse, in covert laid,
And violent death in thousand shapes displayed;
The city to the soldier’s rage resigned;
Successless wars, and poverty behind;
Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores,
And the rash hunter strangled by the boars;
The newborn babe by nurses overlaid;
And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Not too many years ago, a child’s experience was limited by how far he or she could ride a bicycle or by the physical boundaries that parents set. Today ... the real boundaries of a child’s life are set more by the number of available cable channels and videotapes, by the simulated reality of videogames, by the number of megabytes of memory in the home computer. Now kids can go anywhere, as long as they stay inside the electronic bubble.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)