Covert channels in modern computer systems : the cases of mobile and cloud

Abstract

Covert Channels have existed for centuries, from the time of Histiaeus to the modern day. Like its historical roots, the modern covert channel's life cycle consists of identifying new attack vectors, developing countermeasures and continuing with the next thrust and parry cycle. The front line in this conflict now includes mobile devices and cloud computing centers. with valuable content, exploits shared resources on a cloud server. We demonstrated this stealthy timing channel attack achieving worst case native BERs of 1.87 × 10 −2 and 5 × 10 −4 by applying spreading gain. This channel, built on out of the box libraries and application configurations, executed continuously for 24 contiguous days in a major university Computer Science department datacenter. It shared the same highly dynamic environment that actively supported over 1000 virtual and physical nodes.