TWC: Medium: Limits and Algorithms for Covert Communications

TWC：媒介：隐蔽通信的限制和算法

基本信息

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

项目摘要

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。尽管加密方法已被广泛研究以保护消息内容不被窃听者破译，但很多时候隐藏通信的存在是至关重要的。隐藏通信，称为秘密（私人）通信，在许多领域都很重要，例如秘密军事行动，以及消除用户在日常活动中被跟踪的能力。研究如何限制此类秘密通信也很重要，例如组织伤害活动的恐怖分子等各方之间的通信。该项目的重点是了解隐蔽通信的潜力，即可以在不被发现的情况下传达多少信息，以及开发提供隐蔽通信的实用方案以及限制此类通信的技术。历史上一直从实际角度考虑隐蔽通信。例如，扩频通信被开发为一种无线通信技术以提供隐蔽通信。 Tor 等系统的开发是为了提供互联网的隐蔽性。该项目的重点是对现代通信网络的物理层、网络层和应用层通信提供隐蔽性的基本限制进行系统调查。它将探索利用无线信道中的噪声和网络中的定时变化来实现隐蔽通信。这包括在不被发现的情况下秘密传达的信息量方面制定基本限制，同时考虑到所有参与者之间的不确定性。该项目还将重点关注使用 IP 语音和社交网络上的图像发布的应用程序级秘密通信的基本限制。一个关键的考虑因素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改变，或通信方的对手为限制这种通信而做出的改变。第二个重点是算法的设计和评估，以确保通信各方达到这些限制，以及另一组算法，以确保这些各方在试图超出限制时被检测到。

项目成果

期刊论文数量（2）

专著数量（0）

科研奖励数量（0）

会议论文数量（0）

专利数量（0）

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

我仍然知道你去年夏天做了什么：通过流量分析推断消息应用程序上的敏感用户活动

DOI：
10.1109/tdsc.2022.3218191
发表时间：
2023-09-01
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
通讯作者：
D. Towsley

Fundamental Limits of Invisible Flow Fingerprinting

不可见流指纹识别的基本限制