Provably Secure Covert Communication on Blockchain

• Published in: Cryptography Vol. 2; no. 3; p. 18
• Main Author: Partala, Juha
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01-09-2018
• Subjects: Blockchain; Cryptography; Cybersecurity; Data encryption; Digital currencies; Digital signatures; Integrity; Internet of Things; Methods; Privacy; random oracle model; steganography; United States > US; Germany
• ISSN: 2410-387X; 2410-387X
• DOI: 10.3390/cryptography2030018

Blockchain is a public open ledger that provides data integrity in a distributed manner. It is the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies and an increasing number of related applications, such as smart contracts. The open nature of blockchain together with strong integrity guarantees on the stored data makes it a compelling platform for covert communication. In this paper, we suggest a method of securely embedding covert messages into a blockchain. We formulate a simplified ideal blockchain model based on existing implementations and devise a protocol that enables two parties to covertly communicate through the blockchain following that model. We also formulate a rigorous definition for the security and covertness of such a protocol based on computational indistinguishability. Finally, we show that our method satisfies this definition in the random oracle model for the underlying cryptographic hash function.