Authors explore security threat of covert acoustical mesh networks in air

"If we want to exploit a rigorously hardened and tested type of computing system or networks of this type of computing system, we have to break new ground. Covert channels are communication channels utilizing means for communications that have not been designed for communication at all."

So begins a bracing paper published last month in the Journal of Communications. Titled "On Covert Acoustical Mesh Networks in Air," the paper discusses devices that can support stealthy communication preventing immediate detection of the covert channels. The authors, Michael Hanspach and Michael Goetz, are research associates at the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomy (FKIE), in Wachtberg, Germany.

The authors warned that "Acoustical networking as a covert communication technology is a considerable threat to computer security and might even break the security goals of high assurance computing systems based on formally verified micro kernels that did not consider acoustical networking in their security concept."