A performance analysis of authentication using covert timing channels

Abstract

Authentication over a network is an important and difficult problem. Accurately determining the authenticity of a node or user is critical in maintaining the security of a network. Our proposed technique covertly embeds a watermark, or identifying tag, within a data stream. By implementing this model on a LAN and WLAN we show that this method is easily adaptable to a variety of networking technologies, and easily scalable. While our technique increases the time required for data to be transferred, we show that the throughput of the link during the brief authentication window is decreased by no more than 8% in a switched LAN and 11% in a WLAN. During our empirical analysis we were able to detect the watermark with 100% accuracy in both a LAN and WLAN environment. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.