Achieving a Covert Channel over an Open Blockchain Network

Abstract

Blockchain technology is an immutable database that cannot be censored, tampered with, or erased, which can increase credibility and reduce interaction costs. Therefore, blockchain technology is expected to become the next generation Internet infrastructure, with broad application prospects in many industries, such as medicine, energy, and finance. The open network and publicly stored data in a blockchain system, however, raise serious risks of data theft and user privacy leakage, which has become a core issue that restricts the blockchain technology from becoming practical. This article uses kleptography technology to design a blockchain covert data transmission scheme to achieve high-concealment and high-performance data transmission under open network conditions. Experiments conducted in the Bitcoin network prove that the covert data transmission mechanism of this article has high compatibility and high performance, and can be practically applied to many popular blockchain systems.