Multicast steganography using routing protocols

The strengthening of security solutions for computer networks increases the interests in new methods for the transfer of hidden information. In this paper, we considered the use of routing protocols for transmission of steganographic messages. We evaluated such approach using proactive and reactive routing protocols by analyzing the amount of sent data, the number of generated routing packets, the average size of routing packets, and the packet delivery ratio using the NS-3 simulator. Simulations included random network topologies with a various number of nodes and mobility settings. The obtained results showed that reactive routing protocols exchange a large amount of routing packets which can be suitable for steganographic purposes due to network flooding mechanism.