Zephyrus: An Information Hiding Mechanism Leveraging Ethereum Data Fields

IEEE Access

Carmen Camara¹  Lorena Gonzalez-Manzano¹  Jose M. De Fuentes¹  Mar Gimenez-Aguilar¹ 

[1] Computer Security Laboratory, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganes, Spain;

关键词: Ethereum;    information hiding;    steganography;    blockchain;   

DOI  :  10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3106713

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Permanent availability makes blockchain technologies a suitable alternative for building a covert channel. Previous works have analysed its feasibility in a particular blockchain technology called Bitcoin. However, Ethereum cryptocurrency is gaining momentum as a means to build distributed apps. The novelty of this paper relies on the use of Ethereum to establish a covert channel considering all transaction fields and smart contracts. No previous work has explored this issue. Thus, a mechanism called $Zephyrus$ , an information hiding mechanism based on steganography, is developed. Moreover, its capacity, cost and stealthiness are assessed both theoretically, and empirically through a prototype implementation that is publicly released. Disregarding the time taken to send the transaction to the blockchain, its retrieval and the mining time, experimental results show that, in the best case, 40 Kbits can be embedded in 0.57 s. for US $\$ $ 1.64, and retrieved in 2.8 s.

【 授权许可】

Unknown