Abstract
Weiser's vision about computers in the next century is that they will be ubiquitous and in MIT's Media Lab project, called Things That Think, they will be embedded in such objects as shoes, belt buckles, tie clasps, etc. In this paper we explain how covert technology, such as covert channels, covert sensors and covert computing facilitates the set up of Big Brother, for example in a society where computers are ubiquitous. Detecting the absence of covert hardware and covert software is actually undecidable and cryptography alone seems inadequate to protect against the abuse of covert technology, extending the work of Anderson regarding the limitations of cryptography. Also, the use of covert technology to protect copyright can be abused to suppress freedom of expression.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Anderson, R.: Why cryptosystems fail. In Proceedings of the 1st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (November 3–5, 1993) pp. 215–227
Beth, T.: Zur Sicherheit der Informationstechnik. Informatik-Spektrum 13 (1990) 204–215
Beth, T., Desmedt, Y.: Identification tokens — or: Solving the chess grandmaster problem. In Advances in Cryptology — Crypto '90, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 537) (1991) A. J. Menezes and S. A. Vanstone, Eds. Springer-Verlag pp. 169–176
A proposed federal information processing standard for an escrowed encryption standard (EES). Federal Register July 30, 1993
Desmedt, Y.: Is there an ultimate use of cryptography? In Advances in Cryptology, Proc. of Crypto '86 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 263) (1987) A. Odlyzko, Ed. Springer-Verlag pp. 459–463
Encyclopedia of science & technology. McGraw-Hill New York 1992
Guterl, F.: Personal tech: Reinventing the PC. Discover 16 (1995) 42–47
Haigh, J. T., Kemmerer, R., McHugh, J., Young, W. D.: An experience using two covert channel analysis techniques on a real system design. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-13 (1987) 157–168
Hopcroft, J. E., Ullman, J. D.: Introduction to automata theory, languages, and computation. Addison-Wesley Reading, MA 1979
Hutcheson, G. D., Hutcheson, J. D.: Technology and economics in the semiconductor industry. Scientific American 274 (1996) 54–62
Kurak, C., McHugh, J.: A cautionary note on image downgrading. In Proceedings of the 8th Computer Security Applications Conference (December 1992)
Lampson, B. W.: A note on the confinement problem. Comm. ACM 16 (1973) 613–615
Lenstra, A. K., Manasse, M. S.: Factoring by electronic mail. In Advances in Cryptology, Proc. of Eurocrypt '89 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 434) (1990) J.-J. Quisquater and J. Vandewalle, Eds. Springer-Verlag pp. 355–371
Lerner, E. J.: Electromagnetic pulses: potential crippler. IEEE Spectrum 18 (1981) 41–46
Micali, S.: Fair public-key cryptosystems. In Advances in Cryptology — Crypto '92, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 740) (1993) E. F. Brickell, Ed. Springer-Verlag pp. 113–138
Poras, P. A., Kemmerer, R. A.: Covert flow trees: a technique for identifying and analyzing covert storage channels. In Proc. of the 1991 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (May 1991) IEEE Computer Society Press pp. 36–51
Quisquater, J.-J., Desmedt, Y. G.: Chinese lotto as an exhaustive code-breaking machine. Computer 24 (1991) 14–22
Ramsey, N. F.: Precise measurement of time. American Scientist 76 (1988) 42–49
Simmons, G. J.: The prisoners' problem and the subliminal channel. In Advances in Cryptology. Proc. of Crypto 83 (1984) D. Chaum, Ed. Plenum Press N.Y. pp. 51–67
Simmons, G. J.: Subliminal channels; past and present. European Trans. on Telecommunications 5 (1994) 459–473
Simmons, G. J.: Subliminal communication is easy using the DSA. In Advances in Cryptology — Eurocrypt '93, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 765) (1994) T. Helleseth, Ed. Springer-Verlag pp. 218–232
Teller, E.: Electromagnetic pulses from nuclear explosions. IEEE Spectrum (1982) 65
The TTT vision. http://ttt.www.media.mit.edu/vision.html
Weiser, M.: The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American 265 (1991) 94–104
White, S. R.: Covert distributed processing with computer viruses. In Advances in Cryptology — Crypto '89, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 435) (1990) G. Brassard, Ed. Springer-Verlag pp. 616–619
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Desmedt, Y. (1996). Establishing big brother using covert channels and other covert techniques. In: Anderson, R. (eds) Information Hiding. IH 1996. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1174. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61996-8_32
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61996-8_32
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-61996-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49589-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive