A Discussion and Review of Network Steganography
Jun O Seo, Sathiamoorthy Manoharan, Aniket Mahanti · 2016
Network steganography or covert channel allows one to initiate secret communication with the hope that such communication cannot be detected by adversaries. It appears to be a favourable tool that could bring the next level of communication secrecy for everyone. While there are number of research work into how such covert channels are formed and used, there are also a number of work investigating how an adversary might glean some information about the existence of the channels and the content they carry. This paper critically reviews both sides of this research work. After identifying stakeholders and their relationships with steganography, the paper stresses the necessity for detection techniques spanning diverse covert channels. The paper notes the emergence of new covert channels as technology advances, and questions the practicality of keeping ahead of all potential channels. It then argues that prevention techniques such as traffic normalisation might be employed to combat the use of covert channels.