cloud-covert-channels

Creating covert channels in Linux-based cloud container environments. The paper accompanying this research is:
Xing Gao, Benjamin Steenkamer, Zhongshu Gu, Mehmet Kayaalp, Dimitrios Pendarakis, and Haining Wang, "A Study on the Security Implications of Information Leakages in Container Clouds", in IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.

Presentation / Slides

While in graduate school, I decided to give a presentation on the covert channel aspect of this paper for an advanced cyber secuity class. I have uploaded the slides and video recording:

• Slides
• Video presentation (This recording isn't the best; please forgive the mumbling and places where I speak too fast)

Channels

proc-locks

Covert channel using /proc/locks. It implements an ACK system that reduces channel bandwidth, but improves channel reliability.

proc-locks-no-ack

Covert channel using /proc/locks, except the receiver does not ACK the sender for each transmission; Conversely, the sender does not wait for an ACK from the receiver before it sends the next transmission. This implementation has a much higher data bandwidth than the above implementation. However, it is very possible for the receiver to miss a transmission from the sender or re-count the same transmission one or more times.

proc-meminfo

Covert channel using /proc/meminfo. The sink should be started slightly before the source is started. The sink can be run with a "-p" argument to have the recorded data plotted and saved as an image. The plotting script needs Python 3 and matplotlib.