This is the official website of the "Covert Channels and Steganography in Computer Networks" research project at the Distributed Systems and Networks Research Group at the University of St Andrews.

A covert channel is a communication channel that allows two cooperating processes to transfer information in a manner that violates the system’s security policy. It is thus a way of communicating which is not part of the original design of the system.

The use of the covert channels and steganography in public computer networks can prove an effective means of information hiding and secret communication.

With the widespread adoption of the Internet the TCP/IP suite of protocols have become pervasive, and therefore an attractive target for the use of these techniques. Opportunities for the creation of covert channels exist at all layers in the TCP/IP protocol stack.