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International Workshop on Information Hiding

IH 1996: Information Hiding pp 65–71Cite as

Establishing big brother using covert channels and other covert techniques

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1174))

Abstract

Weiser's vision about computers in the next century is that they will be ubiquitous and in MIT's Media Lab project, called Things That Think, they will be embedded in such objects as shoes, belt buckles, tie clasps, etc. In this paper we explain how covert technology, such as covert channels, covert sensors and covert computing facilitates the set up of Big Brother, for example in a society where computers are ubiquitous. Detecting the absence of covert hardware and covert software is actually undecidable and cryptography alone seems inadequate to protect against the abuse of covert technology, extending the work of Anderson regarding the limitations of cryptography. Also, the use of covert technology to protect copyright can be abused to suppress freedom of expression.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 53201-0784, WI, USA

    Yvo Desmedt

Authors
  1. Yvo Desmedt
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Ross Anderson

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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Desmedt, Y. (1996). Establishing big brother using covert channels and other covert techniques. In: Anderson, R. (eds) Information Hiding. IH 1996. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1174. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61996-8_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61996-8_32

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-61996-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49589-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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