Simmons' protocol is not free of subliminal channels

At the VIth Computer Security Foundations Workshop Simmons presented a protocol to make the Digital Signature Standard free of any subliminal channels. As Simmons has pointed out at several occasions the design of protocols is very difficult and one has claimed protocols to have certain properties, they turned out not to have. In this paper we demonstrate that Simmons' protocol is not free of any subliminal channels, by presenting a subliminal channel with a small capacity. We also discuss generalizations which imply that several already presented protocols claimed to be "subliminal-free" are not.

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