Dynamic data protocol exchange to handle passive attacks on trusted transient simple network (TTSN) transactions

The most difficult part of network security is protecting the traffic content from passive attacks. Passive attacks cannot be avoided because the data structure (data protocol) of Internet transactions is well known and of fixed standard. We have considered an alternative to handle passive attacks through utilising dynamic data protocol exchange. The utilisation of dynamic data protocol exchange within the proposed TTSN security control system can significantly increase the time consumed by a passive attack, i.e. security cryptanalysis or brute-force, on encrypted Internet traffic. Such a dynamic data protocol exchange mechanism allows both parties (requester and provider) to replace or modify the data structure of the traffic package as often as required. In this article we describe the development architecture, and we also present results from implementing the dynamic data protocol exchange as part of the TTSN architecture. Since Internet applications are utilising readable script languages, which are very vulnerable against an interception, dynamic data protocol exchange is a better strategy to protect confidentiality and integrity of data.