NetCamo: camouflaging network traffic for QoS-guaranteed mission critical applications

• Published in: IEEE transactions on systems, man and cybernetics. Part A, Systems and humans Vol. 31; no. 4; pp. 253 - 265
• Main Authors: Yong Guan, Xinwen Fu, Dong Xuan, Shenoy, P.U., Bettati, R., Wei Zhao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-07-2001
• Subjects: Application software; Computer information security; Computer networks; Computer security; Cybernetics; Delay; Internet; Mission critical systems; Missions; Networks; Payloads; Processor scheduling; Real time; Real time systems; Telecommunication traffic; Traffic engineering; Traffic flow
• ISSN: 1083-4427; 1558-2426
• DOI: 10.1109/3468.935042

This paper presents the general approach, design, implementation, and evaluation of NetCamo, which is a system to prevent traffic analysis in systems with real-time requirements. Integrated support for both security and real-time is becoming necessary for computer networks that support mission critical applications. This study focuses on how to integrate both the prevention of traffic analysis and guarantees for worst-case delays in an internetwork. We propose and analyze techniques that efficiently camouflage network traffic and correctly plan and schedule the transmission of payload traffic so that both security and real-time requirements are met. The performance evaluation shows that our NetCamo system is effective and efficient. By using the error between target camouflaged traffic and the observed (camouflaged) traffic as metric to measure the quality of the camouflaging, we show that NetCamo achieves very high levels of camouflaging without compromising real-time requirements.