Perspective Chapter: Exploiting System Errors to Develop a Flexible and Reliable Covert Channel
Tamer Fatayer · IntechOpen eBooks · 2026
A deep analytical investigation into techniques for developing covert channels is introduced in this chapter. This includes addressing and identifying areas where covert data is concealed throughout the development of these channels. This chapter classifies the areas of hiding covert data into several sets. These sets identify where the covert data is stored. These sets are header protocol parameters, file systems, operating system resources, data structures, modulation of time patterns, and changing the direction of program flow. In this chapter, I develop and implement a covert channel that relies on the I/O exceptions (e.g., File Not Found) and cryptography. The channel stores encrypted covert data in a system file. This channel is based on modifying code flow to enable covert data to be stored in system files without altering system functionality. The evaluation addresses the covert channel’s flexibility and reliability. The flexibility evaluation is based on time and channel throughput. On the other hand, the reliability evaluation is based on the implemented Java code. The evaluation and analysis results show that the channel achieves high data throughput with low transmission time. These achievements emphasize the impact of the changing code sequence technique for developing flexible and reliable covert communication systems.