Hijacking User Uploads to Online Persistent Data Repositories for Covert Data Exfiltration

<p>As malware has evolved over the years it has gone from harmless programs that copy themselves into other executables to modern day botnets that perform bank fraud and identity theft. Modern malware often has a need to communicate back to the author or other machines that are also infected. Several techniques for transmitting this data covertly have been developed over the years which vary significantly in their level of sophistication. This research creates a new covert channel technique for stealing information from a network by piggybacking on user-generated network traffic. Specifically steganography drop boxes and passive covert channels are merged to create a novel covert data exfiltration technique. This technique revolves around altering user supplied data being uploaded to online repositories such as image hosting websites. It specifically targets devices that are often used to generate and upload content to the Internet such as smartphones. The reliability of this technique is tested by creating a simulated version of Flickr as well as simulating how smartphone users interact with the service. Two different algorithms for recovering the exfiltrated data are compared. The results show a clear improvement for algorithms that are user-aware. The results continue on to compare performance for varying rates of infection of mobile devices and show that performance is proportional to the infection rate.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p>