FROST: Anti-Forensics Digital-Dead-DROp Information Hiding RobuST to Detection & Data Loss with Fault Tolerance

Covert operations involving clandestine dealings and communication through cryptic and hidden messages have existed since time immemorial. While these do have a negative connotation, they have had their fair share of use in situations and applications beneficial to society in general. A "Dead Drop" is one such method of espionage trade craft used to physically exchange items or information between two individuals using a secret rendezvous point. With a "Dead Drop", to maintain operational security, the exchange itself is asynchronous. Information hiding in the slack space is one modern technique that has been used extensively. Slack space is the unused space within the last block allocated to a stored file. However, hiding in slack space operates under significant constraints with little resilience and fault tolerance. In this paper, we propose FROST - a novel asynchronous "Digital Dead Drop" robust to detection and data loss with tunable fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is a critical attribute of a secure and robust system design. Through extensive validation of FROST prototype implementation on Ubuntu Linux, we confirm the performance and robustness of the proposed digital dead drop to detection and data loss. We verify the recoverability of the secret message under various operating conditions ranging from block corruption and drive de-fragmentation to growing existing files on the target drive.