MSCCS: A Monero-based security-enhanced covert communication system

Abstract

Existing public blockchain-based covert communication systems are suffering the issues of insufficient robustness, anti-temper modification, and anonymity at both the transaction and network layers. In this paper, to overcome this problem, we propose a novel Monero-based security-enhanced covert communication system, in which a new storage-type covert channel is developed. This channel makes Monero transaction amount as data carrier for covert communication. Then, we devise two new algorithms, respectively for resisting Eclipse attacks and the two existing node crawling attacks. Extensive simulation experiments show that the developed new covert communication channel can achieve higher robustness, anti-detection, and anonymity. The new security-enhanced algorithms can effectively mitigate Eclipse attacks by 37.6%, and the two existing node crawling attacks by 21.1% and 17.1% respectively.