COVERT CHANNEL AND DATA HIDING IN TCP/IP PROTOCOL SUITE

Abstract

Covert channels are used for the secret transfer of information. Encryption only protects communication from being decoded by unauthorized parties, whereas covert channels aim to hide the very existence of the communication. Initially, covert channels were identified as a security threat on monolithic systems i.e. mainframes. More recently focus has shifted towards covert channels in computer network protocols. The huge amount of data and vast number of different protocols in the Internet seems ideal as a high-bandwidth vehicle for covert communication. This thesis gives a brief overview of covert channels in communication networks, and presents a brief survey of some recent and relevant papers on the use of covert channels in the common Internet protocols, we describe the covert channel concept and weaknesses in the five layered TCP/IP layered model. We also explored the various covert channel carried in TCP/IP protocol suite the mechanisms to detect common covert channels in TCP/IP ...