Covert bits through queues

We consider covert communication using a queuing timing channel in the presence of a warden. The covert message is encoded using the inter-arrival times of the packets, and the legitimate receiver and the warden observe the inter-departure times of the packets from their respective queues. The transmitter and the legitimate receiver also share a secret key to facilitate covert communication. We propose achievable schemes that obtain non-zero covert rate for both exponential and general queues when a sufficiently high rate secret key is available. This is in contrast to other channel models such as the Gaussian channel or the discrete memoryless channel where only O(√n) covert bits can be sent over n channel uses, yielding a zero covert rate.

[1]  Hiroki Koga,et al.  Information-Spectrum Methods in Information Theory , 2002 .

[2]  Bruce E. Hajek,et al.  An information-theoretic and game-theoretic study of timing channels , 2002, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[3]  Xun Gong,et al.  Quantifying the Information Leakage in Timing Side Channels in Deterministic Work-Conserving Schedulers , 2016, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

[4]  Rajesh Sundaresan,et al.  Sequential decoding for the exponential server timing channel , 2000, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[5]  Sergio Verdú,et al.  Bits through queues , 1994, Proceedings of 1994 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory.

[6]  Xun Gong,et al.  Designing Router Scheduling Policies: A Privacy Perspective , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.

[7]  Ira S. Moskowitz,et al.  The channel capacity of a certain noisy timing channel , 1992, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[8]  Todd P. Coleman,et al.  Novel Shaping and Complexity-Reduction Techniques for Approaching Capacity over Queuing Timing Channels , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Communications.

[9]  Andreas Haeberlen,et al.  Detecting Covert Timing Channels with Time-Deterministic Replay , 2014, OSDI.

[10]  Matthieu R. Bloch,et al.  Covert Communication Over Noisy Channels: A Resolvability Perspective , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[11]  Gerhard Kramer,et al.  Effective secrecy: Reliability, confusion and stealth , 2013, 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory.

[12]  Matthieu R. Bloch,et al.  Secure bits through queues , 2009, 2009 IEEE Information Theory Workshop on Networking and Information Theory.

[13]  Parv Venkitasubramaniam,et al.  Mitigating timing based information leakage in shared schedulers , 2012, 2012 Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM.

[14]  Xun Gong,et al.  Information theoretic analysis of side channel information leakage in FCFS schedulers , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory Proceedings.

[15]  Todd P. Coleman,et al.  Practical codes for queueing channels: An algebraic, state-space, message-passing approach , 2008, 2008 IEEE Information Theory Workshop.

[16]  Sergio Verdú,et al.  Approximation theory of output statistics , 1993, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[17]  Ira S. Moskowitz,et al.  An analysis of the timed Z-channel , 1996, Proceedings 1996 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.

[18]  Lizhong Zheng,et al.  Fundamental Limits of Communication With Low Probability of Detection , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.

[19]  Parv Venkitasubramaniam,et al.  Preventing Timing Analysis in Networks: A Statistical Inference Perspective , 2013, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

[20]  Danfeng Zhang,et al.  Predictive black-box mitigation of timing channels , 2010, CCS '10.

[21]  Boulat A. Bash,et al.  Limits of Reliable Communication with Low Probability of Detection on AWGN Channels , 2012, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[22]  Anand S. Bedekar,et al.  The Information-Theoretic Capacity of Discrete-Time Queues , 1997, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.