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Full-Text Articles in Information Security

Passing Time And Syncing Secrets: Demonstrating Covert Channel Vulnerabilities In Precision Time Protocol (Ptp), Aron J. Smith-Donovan Apr 2022

Passing Time And Syncing Secrets: Demonstrating Covert Channel Vulnerabilities In Precision Time Protocol (Ptp), Aron J. Smith-Donovan

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science Honors Projects

Covert channels use steganographic approaches to transfer secret digital communications; when applied to network protocols, these strategies can facilitate undetectable data exfiltration and insertion attacks. Because covert channel techniques are protocol- and implementation-specific, individual case studies are necessary to assess for vulnerabilities under different conditions. While several investigations have been published evaluating covert channel potential in infrastructure- and manufacturing-based contexts, no existing research explores Precision Time Protocol (PTP), a time synchronization protocol commonly used in industrial control systems. This study aims to fill this gap by demonstrating the feasibility of a covert channel-based attack on a PTP-enabled network.


Paul Baran, Network Theory, And The Past, Present, And Future Of Internet, Christopher S. Yoo Dec 2018

Paul Baran, Network Theory, And The Past, Present, And Future Of Internet, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Paul Baran’s seminal 1964 article “On Distributed Communications Networks” that first proposed packet switching also advanced an underappreciated vision of network architecture: a lattice-like, distributed network, in which each node of the Internet would be homogeneous and equal in status to all other nodes. Scholars who have subsequently embraced the concept of a lattice-like network approach have largely overlooked the extent to which it is both inconsistent with network theory (associated with the work of Duncan Watts and Albert-László Barabási), which emphasizes the importance of short cuts and hubs in enabling networks to scale, and the actual way, the Internet …