Covert Timing Channel Analysis Either as Cyber Attacks or Confidential Applications

Al-Eidi, Shorouq and Darwish, Omar and Chen, Yuanzhu (2020) Covert Timing Channel Analysis Either as Cyber Attacks or Confidential Applications. Sensors, 20 (8). ISSN 1424-8220

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Abstract

Covert timing channels are an important alternative for transmitting information in the world of the Internet of Things (IoT). In covert timing channels data are encoded in inter-arrival times between consecutive packets based on modifying the transmission time of legitimate traffic. Typically, the modification of time takes place by delaying the transmitted packets on the sender side. A key aspect in covert timing channels is to find the threshold of packet delay that can accurately distinguish covert traffic from legitimate traffic. Based on that we can assess the level of dangerous of security threats or the quality of transferred sensitive information secretly. In this paper, we study the inter-arrival time behavior of covert timing channels in two different network configurations based on statistical metrics, in addition we investigate the packet delaying threshold value. Our experiments show that the threshold is approximately equal to or greater than double the mean of legitimate inter-arrival times. In this case covert timing channels become detectable as strong anomalies.

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