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International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing: Applications and Technologies

PDCAT 2018: Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies pp 159–168Cite as

Covert Timing Channel Design for Uniprocessor Real-Time Systems

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Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 931))

Abstract

Different from a general-purpose system, a real-time system requires stringent timing guarantees. While existing offline analysis techniques can provide timing guarantees using the worst-case execution time (WCET) of individual tasks, a variation of actual execution time makes it difficult to build covert timing channel. In this paper, we first present a novel covert timing channel, which considers actual execution time distribution of tasks and controls execution time to leak data between conspirators; we demonstrate that it is possible to leak data in real-time systems. Second, we suggest two enhancing techniques called S-R LCM (sender-receiver least common multiple) and noise area to reduce noise in communication. Through simulations, we demonstrate that our covert timing channel can serve trade-off between transmission speed and accuracy; that is, it shows average 50.2%, 54.6% and 51.3% accuracy for 100 test cases with thresholds 0, 1.4 and 2.8. Average 58.4% accuracy is accomplished with best threshold values for 100 test cases, and the maximum accuracy for a single test case is recorded 100.0%.

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Acknowledgement

A short, earlier version of this paper has been presented as a domestic conference [17], which is 3-page-long.

This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (2017R1A2B2002458, 2017H1D8A2031628, 2017K2A9A1A01092689) and by the Ministry of Education (2018R1D1A1B07040321). This research was also supported by the IITP (Institute for Information & communications Technology Promotion) funded by the MSIT (Ministry of Science and ICT) (2015-0-00914, IITP-2017-2015-0-00742).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Software, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea

    Jaeheon Kwak & Jinkyu Lee

Authors
  1. Jaeheon Kwak
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  2. Jinkyu Lee
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jinkyu Lee .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Jong Hyuk Park

  2. School of Computer Science, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Hong Shen

  3. Department of Multimedia Engineering, Dongguk University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Yunsick Sung

  4. School of ICT, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia

    Hui Tian

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Kwak, J., Lee, J. (2019). Covert Timing Channel Design for Uniprocessor Real-Time Systems. In: Park, J., Shen, H., Sung, Y., Tian, H. (eds) Parallel and Distributed Computing, Applications and Technologies. PDCAT 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 931. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5907-1_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5907-1_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-5906-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-5907-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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