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On the computation of covert channel capacity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2010

Eugene Asarin  and
Cătălin Dima
Eugene Asarin
Affiliation:
LIAFA, Université Denis Diderot and CNRS, Case 7014, 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France; [email protected]
Cătălin Dima
Affiliation:
LACL, Université Paris-Est – Université Paris 12, 61 av. du Général de Gaulle, 94010 Créteil, France; [email protected]
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Abstract

We address the problem of computing the capacity of a covert channel, modeled as a nondeterministic transducer. We give three possible statements of the notion of “covert channel capacity” and relate the different definitions. We then provide several methods allowing the computation of lower and upper bounds for the capacity of a channel. We show that, in some cases, including the case of input-deterministic channels, the capacity of the channel can be computed exactly (e.g. in the form of “the largest root of some polynomial”).

Keywords

Covert channelsentropysynchronous transducers.
Type
Research Article
Information
RAIRO - Theoretical Informatics and Applications , Volume 44 , Issue 1: Special issue dedicated to the 12th "Journées Montoises d'Informatique Théorique" , January 2010 , pp. 37 - 58
Copyright
© EDP Sciences, 2010

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