Covert Distributed Computing Using Java Through Web Spoofing

We use the Web Spoofing attack reported by Cohen and also the Secure Internet Programming Group at Princeton University to give a new method of achieving covert distributed computing with Java. We show how Java applets that perform a distributed computation can be inserted into vulnerable Web pages. This has the added feature that users can rejoin a computation at some later date through bookmarks made while the pages previously viewed were spoofed. Few signs of anything unusual can be observed. Users need not knowingly revisit a particular Web page to be victims. We also propose a simple countermeasure against such a spoofing attack, which would be useful to help users detect the presence of Web Spoofing. Finally, we introduce the idea of browser users, as clients of Web-based services provided by third parties, paying for these services by running a distributed computation applet for a short period of time

Covert Distributed Computing Using Java Through Web Spoofing

We use the Web Spoofing attack reported by Cohen and also the Secure Internet Programming Group at Princeton University to give a new method of achieving covert distributed computing with Java. We show how Java applets that perform a distributed computation can be inserted into vulnerable Web pages. This has the added feature that users can rejoin a computation at some later date through bookmarks made while the pages previously viewed were spoofed. Few signs of anything unusual can be observed. Users need not knowingly revisit a particular Web page to be victims

Covert Distributed Computing Using Java Through Web Spoofing

An example of such a problem is determination of the key used to encrypt a block of data with an algorithm such as DES (Data Encryption Standard). The computer time required could be obtained with the full knowledge and cooperation of the individuals controlling the resources, or covertly without their knowledge by some means. A past suggestion for the covert accomplishment of tasks such as this involved the use of computer viruses to perform distributed computations [1]. Java is a general purpose object-oriented programming language introduced in 1995 by Sun Microsystems. It is similar in many ways to C and C++. Programs written in Java may be compiled to a platform-independent bytecode which can be executed on any platform to which the Java runtime system has been ported; the Java bytecodes are commonly simply interpreted, however speed of execution of Java programs can be improved by using a runtime system which translates the bytecodes into native machine instructions at execution time. Such systems, incorporating these Just-in-time (JIT) compilers, are becoming mor