NExtSteP: An Extensible Testbed for Network Covert Channels
Olga Chen, Aaron D. Jaggard, Catherine A. Meadows, Michael C. Shlanta · 2020
We describe the design, initial implementation, and preliminary use of an extensible testbed-the NRL Extensible Stealthy Protocol (NExtSteP) testbed-for studying stealthy communication via covert channels in network traffic. We present the architecture and initial implementation of NExtSteP, including traffic (synthetic generation or the ingestion of real-world data), message embedding, channel modeling, the use of various tests to detect embedded messages, and the evaluation of those detection methods. We also present some preliminary results to demonstrate the utility of the testbed; these include results on synthetic data to validate the testbed and a demonstration of analysis of real-world data.