When an inaudible sound covert channel (ISCC) attack is launched inside a computer system, sensitive data are converted to inaudible sound waves and then transmitted. The receiver at the other end picks up the sound signal, from which the original sensitive data can be recovered. As a forceful countermeasure against the ISCC attack, strong noise can be used to jam the channel and literally shut down any possible sound data transmission. In this paper, enhanced ISCC is proposed, whose transmission frequency can be dynamically changed. Essentially, if the transmitter detects that the covert channel is being jammed, the transmitter and receiver both will switch to another available frequency and re-establish their communications, following the proposed communications protocol. Experimental results show that the proposed enhanced ISCC can remain connected even in the presence of a strong jamming noise source. Correspondingly, a detection method based on frequency scanning is proposed to help to combat such an anti-jamming sound channel. With the proposed countermeasure, the bit error rate (BER) of the data communications over enhanced ISCC soars to more than 48％, essentially shutting down the data transmission, and thus neutralizing the security threat.

Xiao-Hang Wang;Shou-Bin Li;Ying-Tao Jiang;Amit Kumar Singh;Bi-Yun Ma;Le-Tian Huang;Mei Yang;Fen Guo

School of Cyber Science and Technology,Zhejiang University,Hangzhou 310012█ZJU-Hangzhou Global Scientific and Technological Innovation Center,Hangzhou 310012;School of Software Engineering,South China University of Technology,Guangzhou 510006;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,University of Nevada,Las Vegas 89154;School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering,University of Essex,Colchester CO43SQ;School of Electronics and Information Engineering,South China University of Technology,Guangzhou 510640

电子科技学刊

[1]Xiao-Hang Wang;Shou-Bin Li;Ying-Tao Jiang;Amit Kumar Singh;Bi-Yun Ma;Le-Tian Huang;Mei Yang;Fen Guo-.Inaudible Sound Covert Channel with Anti-Jamming Capability: Attacks vs. Countermeasure)[J].电子科技学刊,2022(04):396-415

Inaudible,Countermeasure,forceful,jammed,soars

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