Patrick Lloyd

Abstract

In the following thesis, an overview of covert channels within Voice over IP is given and then expanded upon by presenting an experiment which proves the ability to hide messages within the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Session Description Protocol (SDP) of a Voice over IP packet. The plain text nature of the SIP and SDP packets allow for an easily embedded message to be encoded into the expected data, while also being "hidden in plain sight" due to the packet only being sent once per VoIP session. While previous papers [15] have proposed the ability to hide covert messages within the plain text SIP and SDP packets of a VoIP call stream, this thesis is the first to carefully analyze and test the ability to embed data in these packets and send a covert message, based on an agreement between the sending and receiving parties. Results include the success for covert messages to be hidden within the Max-Forwards field, a field used for the total number of hops between sender and receiver, the V field, a field used for the version of SIP being used, the T field, usually used for the time a session becomes active on the sending and receiving ends, and finally the O field which designates the owner the call was originally sent from. This success was met with equal failure of previously proposed abilities to hide messages [15] in the Branch statement, tag field, and Call-ID field. A method for systems administrators or network administrators to detect covert channels coming in over a VoIP enabled network using a simple, modified java based packet capture tool is then presented with the ability to check the Max-Forwards, V, T and O fields, due to their low entropy and easy detectability. Using this method, a discussion is given regarding the detectability of covert channels as compared to previous research papers.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Internet telephony--Security measures; Computer security; Cryptography

Publication Date

2010

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

- Please Select One -

Advisor

Yuan, Bo

Advisor/Committee Member

Johnson, Daryl

Advisor/Committee Member

Lutz, Peter

Comments

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works in December 2013.

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Plan Codes

COMPSEC-MS

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