On the Secrecy of Timing-Based Active Watermarking Trace-Back Techniques

Timing-based active watermarking schemes are developed to trace back attackers through stepping stone connections or anonymizing networks. By slightly changing packet timing, these schemes achieve robust correlation for encrypted network connections under timing perturbation. However, the manipulation on packet timing makes the schemes themselves a potential target of intelligent attackers. In this paper, we analyze the secrecy of the timingbased active watermarking techniques for tracing through stepping stones, and propose an attack scheme based on analyzing the packet delays between adjacent stepping stones. We develop attack techniques to infer important watermark parameters, and to recover and duplicate embedded watermarks. The resulting techniques enable an attacker to defeat the tracing systems in certain cases by removing watermarks from the stepping stone connections, or replicating watermarks in non-stepping stone connections. We also develop techniques to determine in real-...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: SP
• Authors: Pai Peng, Peng Ning, Douglas S. Reeves
• Keywords: Packet Timing, Security Privacy, SP 2006, Stepping Stone, Stone Connection