Paper Details

Covert channels are communication mechanisms that were never intended nor designed to carry information. Assuch, they are often able to act “below" the notice of mechanisms designed to enforce security policies. Therefore, usingcovert channels it might be possible to establish a covert communication that escapes notice of the enforcement mechanismin place. Any covertchannel present in digital communications offers a possibility of achieving a secret, and thereforeunmonitored, communication. One of the most ubiquitous protocols in deployment is the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4).Its universal presence and range make it an ideal candidate for covert channel investigation.This imminent exhaustion ofIPv4 address space will soon force a mass migration towards Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) expressly designed as itssuccessor. While the protocol itself is already over a decade old, its adoption is still in its infancy.An active warden is thereso that it can observe and modify network traffic in its area of responsibility. And active wardens performs the task toprevent and disrupt covert channel communication by modifying the content of network traffic. As much as possible an activewarden should maintain the syntactic and semantic integrity of the modified traffic to avoid breaking the covercommunication.

Dr.Dhananjay M. Dakhane, Akash P. Bhad, “Covert Channels in IPv6”, International Journal of Advance Engineering and Research Development (IJAERD), Vol. 5, Issue 3, pp. 1119-1124, March 2018.