An approach of covert communication based on the Ethereum whisper protocol in blockchain. Issue 2 (11th November 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhang, Lejun; Zhang, Zhijie; Jin, Zilong; Su, Yansen; Wang, Zhuzhu
• Is Part Of: International journal of intelligent systems. Volume 36:Issue 2(2021)
• Page Start: 962
• Page End: 996
• Publication Date: 2020-11-11
• Subjects: blockchain -- covert communication -- Ethereum whisper protocol -- information hiding -- steganography; Artificial intelligence -- Periodicals; Expert systems (Computer science) -- Periodicals; Intelligence artificielle -- Périodiques; Systèmes experts (Informatique) -- Périodiques; 006.3
• DOI: 10.1002/int.22327
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0884-8173

Abstract

Abstract: The traditional covert communication that relies on a central node is vulnerable to detection and attack. Applying blockchain to covert communication can improve the channel's anti‐interference and antitampering. Whisper is the communication protocol of Ethereum, which mainly relies on payload to store information and padding to expand. These two fields can store a large amount of information, creating conditions for the realization of covert communication. In this paper, we propose a covert communication method based on the whisper protocol to covertly transfer information in the blockchain. To implement this method, we use payload to store the carrier information, matching it with the secret message. The generated index is recorded in the padding field. To improve the concealment of communication, we simulate the default filling rules of the protocol to maintain the message size. A new topic–key pair interaction method is also proposed to improve the security of the model. Moreover, the anti‐interference, antitampering and antidetection of the newly proposed model are verified through theoretical analysis and experiment. The experimental findings show that the amount of information in the proposed method is 4.7 times that of the traditional time‐based covert communication. The time consumption of information transmission is reduced to 52.25% under the same settings and even less in actual use. The cost of the new topic–key pair interaction is reduced by nearly 50% compared with the original method.