CrypticRoute: Covert Data Transmission Ensuring Confidentiality and Integrity in Local Area Network

Network steganography hides data within network communications to provide data confidentiality. However, the hidden data may not be fully protected, as it can be stolen using sophisticated eavesdropping techniques or can be tempered to compromise its integrity. In this paper, we have proposed a technique called CrypticRoute to efficiently hide the communication channel in a local area network (LAN). We have utilized the AES-256 algorithm to encrypt the data for enhanced confidentiality and the SHA-256 checksum to ensure data integrity. In addition, CrypticRoute can perform secure receiver discovery using a key-based method. CrypticRoute is analyzed in a LAN setup using different experiments. Evaluation of CrypticRoute shows its superiority in terms of number of transmitted packets as well as session duration and data transfer time.