skip to main content
10.1145/1005140.1005153acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesccsConference Proceedingsconference-collections
Article

Covert channels and anonymizing networks

Published: 30 October 2003 Publication History

Abstract

There have long been threads of investigation into covert channels, and threads of investigation into anonymity, but these two closely related areas of information hiding have not been directly associated. This paper represents an initial inquiry into the relationship between covert channel capacity and anonymity, and poses more questions than it answers. Even this preliminary work has proven difficult, but in this investigation lies the hope of a deeper understanding of the nature of both areas. MIXes have been used for anonymity, where the concern is shielding the identity of the sender or the receiver of a message, or both. In contrast to traffic analysis prevention methods which conceal larger traffic patterns, we are concerned with how much information a sender to a MIX can leak to an eavesdropping outsider, despite the concealment efforts of MIXes acting as firewalls.

References

[1]
Dakshi Agrawal, Dogan Kesdogan, and Stefan Penz. Probabilistic treatment of MIXes to hamper traffic analysis. In IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pages 16--27, Oakland, California, May 2003.]]
[2]
The anonymizer. http://www.anonymizer.com/.]]
[3]
Oliver Berthold, Hannes Federrath, and Stefan Köpsell. Web MIXes: A sytem for anonymous and unobservable internet access. In Hannes Federrath, editor, Designing Privacy Enhancing Technologies: Design Issues in Anonymity and Observability, pages 115--129. Springer-Verlag, LNCS 2009, July 2000.]]
[4]
Oliver Berthold, Andreas Pfitzmann, and Ronny Standke. The disadvantages of free MIX routes and how to overcome them. In Hannes Federrath, editor, Designing Privacy Enhancing Technologies: Design Issues in Anonymity and Observability, pages 27--45. Springer-Verlag, LNCS 2009, July 2000.]]
[5]
David Chaum. Untraceable electronic mail, return addresses, and digital pseudonyms. Communications of the ACM, 24(2):84--88, 1981.]]
[6]
Richard Clayton, George Danezis, and Markus G. Kuhn. Real world patterns of failure in anonymity systems. In Ira S. Moskowitz, editor, Information Hiding, 4th International Workshop (IH 2001), pages 230--244. Springer-Verlag, LNCS 2137, 2001.]]
[7]
Thomas M. Cover and Joy A. Thomas. Elements of Information Theory. Wiley, 1991.]]
[8]
Claudia Díaz, Stefaan Seys, Joris Claessens, and Bart Preneel. Towards measuring anonymity. In Paul Syverson and Roger Dingledine, editors, Privacy Enhacing Technologies (PET 2002). Springer-Verlag, LNCS 2482, April 2002.]]
[9]
Robert G. Gallager. Information Theory and Reliable Communication. Wiley, 1968.]]
[10]
S. Kent and R. Atkinson. Security architecture for the Internet Protocol, 1998.]]
[11]
Dogan Kesdogan, Dakshi Agrawal, and Stefan Penz. Limits of anonymity in open environments. In F. A. P. Petitcolas, editor, Information Hiding, 5th International Workshop (IH 2002), pages 53--69. Springer-Verlag, LNCS 2578, 2002.]]
[12]
E. E. Majani and H. Rumsey. Two results on binary input discrete memoryless channels. In IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, page 104, June 1991.]]
[13]
Ira S. Moskowitz and Myong H. Kang. Covert channels --- here to stay? In Proc. COMPASS'94, pages 235--243, Gaithersburg, MD, June 27-July 1 1994. IEEE Press.]]
[14]
Ira S. Moskowitz, Richard E. Newman, Daniel P. Crepeau, and Allen R. Miller. A detailed mathematical analysis of a class of covert channels arising in certain anonymizing networks. In NRL Memorandum Report, NRL/MR/5540-03-8691, 2003. http://chacs.nrl.navy.mil/publications/CHACS/2003/2003moskowitz-memo-5540-03-8691.pdf.]]
[15]
Richard E. Newman, Ira S. Moskowitz, Paul Syverson, and Andrei Serjantov. Metrics for traffic analysis prevention. In PET 2003, Dresden, March 2003.]]
[16]
R. E. Newman-Wolfe and B. R. Venkatraman. High level prevention of traffic analysis. In Proc. IEEE/ACM Seventh Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, pages 102--109, San Antonio, TX, Dec 2--6 1991. IEEE CS Press.]]
[17]
R. E. Newman-Wolfe and B. R. Venkatraman. Performance analysis of a method for high level prevention of traffic analysis. In Proc. IEEE/ACM Eighth Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, pages 123--130, San Antonio, TX, Nov 30-Dec 4 1992. IEEE CS Press.]]
[18]
Onion routing home page. http://www.onion-router.net.]]
[19]
Andreas Pfitzmann and Marit Köhntopp. Anonymity, unobservability and pseudonymity --- a proposal for terminology. In Hannes Federrath, editor, Designing Privacy Enhancing Technologies: Design Issues in Anonymity and Observability, pages 1--9. Springer-Verlag, LNCS 2009, July 2000.]]
[20]
J. Postel. User Datagram Protocol, 1980.]]
[21]
A. P. Prudnikov, Yu. A. Brychkov, and O. I. Marichev. Integrals and Series, Volume 1. Gordon and Breach, 1986.]]
[22]
Michael K. Reiter and Aviel D. Rubin. Crowds: anonymity for web transactions. ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, 1(1):66--92, 1998.]]
[23]
Andrei Serjantov and George Danezis. Towards an information theoretic metric for anonymity. In Paul Syverson and Roger Dingledine, editors, Privacy Enhacing Technologies (PET 2002). Springer-Verlag, LNCS 2482, April 2002.]]
[24]
Claude E. Shannon. The mathematical theory of communication. Bell Systems Technical Journal, 30:50--64, 1948.]]
[25]
Claude E. Shannon. The zero error capacity of a noisy channel. IRE Trans. on Information Theory, Vol. IT-2:S8--S19, September 1956.]]
[26]
B. R. Venkatraman and R. E. Newman-Wolfe. Transmission schedules to prevent traffic analysis. In Proc. IEEE/ACM Ninth Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, pages 108--115, Orlando, FL, December 6-10 1993. IEEE CS Press.]]
[27]
B. R. Venkatraman and R. E. Newman-Wolfe. Performance analysis of a method for high level prevention of traffic analysis using measurements from a campus network. In Proc. IEEE/ACM Tenth Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, pages 288--297, Orlando, FL, December 5-9 1994. IEEE CS Press.]]
[28]
B. R. Venkatraman and R. E. Newman-Wolfe. Capacity estimation and auditability of network covert channels. In Proc. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pages 186--198, Oakland, CA, May 8-10 1995. IEEE CS Press.]]

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)Methods of Identifying and Reducing Covert Channel Attacks: An Analysis2023 2nd International Conference on Futuristic Technologies (INCOFT)10.1109/INCOFT60753.2023.10425607(1-7)Online publication date: 24-Nov-2023
  • (2023)Detection and Mitigation Mechanisms for Covert Channel Attack2023 IEEE International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology (ICCST)10.1109/ICCST59048.2023.10474231(1-7)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Toward Privacy-Preserving Localization and Mapping in eXtended Reality: A Privacy Threat Model2023 Joint European Conference on Networks and Communications & 6G Summit (EuCNC/6G Summit)10.1109/EuCNC/6GSummit58263.2023.10188227(635-640)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Covert channels and anonymizing networks

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    WPES '03: Proceedings of the 2003 ACM workshop on Privacy in the electronic society
    October 2003
    135 pages
    ISBN:1581137761
    DOI:10.1145/1005140
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 30 October 2003

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. MIX
    2. anonymity
    3. covert channel
    4. information theory

    Qualifiers

    • Article

    Conference

    CCS03
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 106 of 355 submissions, 30%

    Upcoming Conference

    CCS '25

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)11
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
    Reflects downloads up to 05 Mar 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2023)Methods of Identifying and Reducing Covert Channel Attacks: An Analysis2023 2nd International Conference on Futuristic Technologies (INCOFT)10.1109/INCOFT60753.2023.10425607(1-7)Online publication date: 24-Nov-2023
    • (2023)Detection and Mitigation Mechanisms for Covert Channel Attack2023 IEEE International Carnahan Conference on Security Technology (ICCST)10.1109/ICCST59048.2023.10474231(1-7)Online publication date: 11-Oct-2023
    • (2023)Toward Privacy-Preserving Localization and Mapping in eXtended Reality: A Privacy Threat Model2023 Joint European Conference on Networks and Communications & 6G Summit (EuCNC/6G Summit)10.1109/EuCNC/6GSummit58263.2023.10188227(635-640)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
    • (2017)Complexity and information flow analysis for multi-threaded programsThe European Physical Journal Special Topics10.1140/epjst/e2016-60402-0226:10(2375-2392)Online publication date: 31-Jan-2017
    • (2016)Axioms for Information Leakage2016 IEEE 29th Computer Security Foundations Symposium (CSF)10.1109/CSF.2016.13(77-92)Online publication date: Jun-2016
    • (2014)Quantifying Information Flow for Dynamic SecretsProceedings of the 2014 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy10.1109/SP.2014.41(540-555)Online publication date: 18-May-2014
    • (2014)Additive and Multiplicative Notions of Leakage, and Their CapacitiesProceedings of the 2014 IEEE 27th Computer Security Foundations Symposium10.1109/CSF.2014.29(308-322)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2014
    • (2014)Compositional methods for information-hidingMathematical Structures in Computer Science10.1017/S096012951400029226:6(908-932)Online publication date: 24-Nov-2014
    • (2014)When Not All Bits Are Equal: Worth-Based Information FlowPrinciples of Security and Trust10.1007/978-3-642-54792-8_7(120-139)Online publication date: 2014
    • (2014)Quantitative Security Analysis for Programs with Low Input and Noisy OutputProceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Engineering Secure Software and Systems - Volume 836410.1007/978-3-319-04897-0_6(77-94)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2014
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media