Detecting Covert Channels in FPS Online Games

Encryption is often not sufficient to secure communication, since it does not hide that communication takes place or who is communicating with whom. Covert channels hide the very existence of communication enabling individuals to communicate secretly. Previous work proposed a covert channel hidden inside multi-player first person shooter online game traffic (FPSCC). FPSCC has a low bit rate, but it is practically impossible to eliminate other than by blocking the overt game traffic. This paper shows that with knowledge of the channel's encoding and using machine learning techniques, FPSCC can be detected with an accuracy of 95% or higher.