Home // International Journal On Advances in Telecommunications, volume 5, numbers 3 and 4, 2012 // View article

Analysis of a MAC Layer Covert Channel in 802.11 Networks

Authors:
Ricardo Goncalves
Murali Tummala
John McEachen

Keywords: IEEE802.11 MAC frame; frame forging; covert channel; protocol version

Abstract:
In this work, we present a proof of concept on a new covert channel in IEEE 802.11 networks, making use of the Protocol Version field in the MAC header. This is achieved by forging modified CTS and ACK frames. Forward error correction mechanisms and interleaving were implemented to increase the proposed channel's robustness to error. A laboratory implementation of the proposed channel and the results of tests conducted on the proposed channel, including measurements of channel errors, available data rate for transmission and channel detectability, are presented. The results validate the viability of the proposed covert channel and demonstrate that robustness of the channel to frame errors can be improved by using well known forward error correction and interleaving techniques.

Pages: 131 to 140

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2012. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 31, 2012

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2601