Control Protocols for Reliable Network Steganography
Wojciech Mazurczyk, Steffen Wendzel, Sebastian Zander, Amir Houmansadr, Krzysztof Szczypiorski · 2016
This chapter deals with control protocols that serve as enablers for feature-rich network steganography. Before defining a steganographic control protocol, it is needed to understand the idea of a communication protocol. This chapter discusses existing control protocols for network information hiding. When designing a control protocol for a covert storage channel, methods available from the area of protocol engineering can be applied to design, verify, and test the protocol. In addition to the development of covert channel-internal control protocols, other major ways to improve the resilience of covert communications are autonomous or adaptive covert channels. Adaptive control channels can bypass administrative changes or restrictions in networks by observing the network environment in which they operate. Timing channels can utilize coding techniques to signal hidden information so that a reliable data transfer can be achieved. Attacks on control protocols are also feasible.