NetCamo: Camouflaging network traffic for QoS-guaranteed mission critical applications

This paper presents the general approach, design, implementation, and evalu ation of NetCamo, which is a system to prevent traffic analysis in systems with real-time requirements. Integrated support for both security and real- time is becoming necessary for computer networks that support mission criti cal applications. This study focuses on how to integrate both the preventio n of traffic analysis and guarantees for worst-case delays in an internetwo rk. We propose and analyze techniques that efficiently camouflage network t raffic and correctly plan and schedule the Transmission of payload traffic so that both security and real-time requirements are met. The performance e valuation shows that our NetCamo system is effective and efficient. By usin g the error between target camouflaged traffic and the observed (camouflage d) traffic as metric to measure the quality of the camouflaging, we show th at NetCamo achieves very high levels of camouflaging without compromising r eal-time requirements.