TWC: Medium: Limits and Algorithms for Covert Communications

TWC：媒介：隐蔽通信的限制和算法

• 批准号: 1564067
• 负责人: Donald Towsley
• 金额: $ 119.88万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-08-01 至 2020-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1564067&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: TWC; Medium; Limits; Algorithms; Covert

Security and privacy are prominent concerns in modern communications. Although cryptographic approaches have been widely studied to protect a message's content from deciphering by an eavesdropper, there are many times when hiding the very existence of the communication is critical. The hiding of communication, termed covert (private) communication, is important in many domains such as covert military operations, and removing the ability of users to be tracked in their everyday activities. It is also important to study how to limit such covert communications, for example between parties such as terrorists organizing activities to do harm. This project is focused on understanding what the potential is for covert communications, i.e., how much information can be communicated without detection, and the development of practical schemes for providing covert communications as well as techniques for limiting such communication. Covert communication has been historically considered from a practical perspective. For example spread spectrum communications was developed as a wireless communication technique to provide covert communications. Systems such as Tor were developed to provide covertness in the Internet. This project focuses on the systematic investigation of the fundamental limits in providing covertness in communications at the physical, the network, and the application layers of modern communication networks. It will explore the use of noise in wireless channels and timing variabilities in networks to implement covert communications. This includes the development of fundamental limits in terms of the amount of information that can be conveyed covertly without being detected, while accounting for uncertainties among all participants. The project will also focus on the development of fundamental limits for application-level covert communications using voice over IP and image posting on social networks. A key consideration will be how these limits can be impacted by changes in the operating environment, including those changes made intentionally by allies of the communicating parties to enhance covert communications or those made by adversaries of the communicating parties to limit such. A second focus will be on the design and evaluation of algorithms that ensure communicating parties achieve these limits and another set of algorithms that ensure these parties are detected when they attempt to exceed the limits.

安全和隐私是现代通信中的突出问题。虽然加密方法已被广泛研究，以保护消息的内容从解密的窃听者，有很多时候，隐藏通信的存在是至关重要的。 通信的隐藏，被称为隐蔽（私人）通信，在许多领域中是重要的，例如隐蔽的军事行动，以及消除用户在日常活动中被跟踪的能力。还必须研究如何限制这种秘密通信，例如在恐怖分子等组织活动进行伤害的各方之间的秘密通信。这个项目的重点是了解什么是潜在的秘密通信，即，有多少信息可以在不被发现的情况下传递，以及开发提供秘密通信的实用方案和限制这种通信的技术。历史上，人们一直从实用的角度来考虑隐蔽通信。例如，扩频通信被开发为无线通信技术以提供隐蔽通信。 像Tor这样的系统是为了在互联网中提供隐蔽性而开发的。该项目的重点是在现代通信网络的物理，网络和应用层提供通信的隐蔽性的基本限制的系统调查。 它将探索使用无线信道中的噪声和网络中的时间可变性来实现隐蔽通信。 这包括在考虑到所有参与者之间的不确定性的同时，对可以秘密传递而不被发现的信息量制定基本限制。 该项目还将侧重于为使用IP语音和在社交网络上发布图像的应用级隐蔽通信制定基本限制。 一个关键的考虑因素将是这些限制如何受到操作环境变化的影响，包括通信方的盟友为加强秘密通信而故意做出的变化，或者通信方的对手为限制这种变化而做出的变化。 第二个重点将是设计和评估确保通信各方达到这些限制的算法，以及另一套确保这些方在试图超过限制时被检测到的算法。

项目成果

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer: Inferring Sensitive User Activities on Messaging Applications Through Traffic Analysis

• DOI: 10.1109/tdsc.2022.3218191
• 发表时间: 2023-09
• 期刊: IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
• 影响因子: 7.3
• 作者: Ardavan Bozorgi;Alireza Bahramali;Fateme Rezaei;Amirhossein Ghafari;Amir Houmansadr;Ramin Soltani;D. Goeckel;D. Towsley

Fundamental Limits of Invisible Flow Fingerprinting

不可见流指纹识别的基本限制

• DOI: 10.1109/tifs.2019.2919870
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
• 影响因子: 6.8
• 作者: Soltani, Ramin;Goeckel, Dennis;Towsley, Don;Houmansadr, Amir
• 通讯作者: Houmansadr, Amir