Covert Channels in the MQTT-Based Internet of Things

IEEE Access

Steffen Wendzel¹  Aleksandar Velinov²  Wojciech Mazurczyk³  Aleksandra Mileva³ 

[1] Department of Computer Engineering and Intelligent Systems, Faculty of Computer Science, University Goce Delcev, &x0160;Department of Information Technologies, Faculty of Computer Science, University Goce Delcev, &x0160;tip, Macedonia;

关键词: MQTT;    network steganography;    network covert channels;    data hiding;    information hiding;    IoT;   

DOI  :  10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2951425

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Network covert channels are a part of the information hiding research area that deals with the secret transfer of information over communication networks. Covert channels can be utilized, for instance, for data leakage and stealthy malware communications. While data hiding in communication networks has been studied within the last years for several major communication protocols, currently no work is available that investigates covert channels for the publish-subscriber model. To fill this gap, we present the first comprehensive study of covert channels in a protocol utilizing the publish-subscriber model, i.e., the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol which is widely deployed in Internet of Things (IoT) environments. In particular, we describe seven direct and six indirect covert channels and we evaluate and categorize them using the network information hiding patterns approach. Finally, in order to prove that MQTT-based covert channels are practically feasible and effective, we implement the chosen data hiding scheme and perform its experimental evaluation.

【 授权许可】

Unknown