TY - GEN
T1 - Trilobyte
T2 - 15th ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy, CODASPY 2025
AU - Feng, Yuzhou
AU - Pinjala, Sandeep Kiran
AU - Sion, Radu
AU - Carbunar, Bogdan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
PY - 2025/6/4
Y1 - 2025/6/4
N2 - Plausibly deniable communication solutions built on services popular in Western countries may invite closer scrutiny into the activities of their users in censored countries. This paper investigates the ability of popular single-player games to provide the medium for plausibly deniable communications. We introduce Trilobyte, a system that hides data in game state generated opportunistically during regular game-playing activities, and shares data-hiding state through accounts on gaming platforms. We show that even in the presence of hypothetical censors that inspect game state, Trilobyte can hide up to 5.3 MB of data in game state saved in a one hour gaming session. We investigate the practicality of Trilobyte through surveys with 285 Chinese gamers, and by renting and purchasing thousands of gaming accounts. We find that most investigated games, including games developed in China, allow users to communicate keywords considered sensitive in China, when compressed, encrypted or hidden in game state or chat channels.
AB - Plausibly deniable communication solutions built on services popular in Western countries may invite closer scrutiny into the activities of their users in censored countries. This paper investigates the ability of popular single-player games to provide the medium for plausibly deniable communications. We introduce Trilobyte, a system that hides data in game state generated opportunistically during regular game-playing activities, and shares data-hiding state through accounts on gaming platforms. We show that even in the presence of hypothetical censors that inspect game state, Trilobyte can hide up to 5.3 MB of data in game state saved in a one hour gaming session. We investigate the practicality of Trilobyte through surveys with 285 Chinese gamers, and by renting and purchasing thousands of gaming accounts. We find that most investigated games, including games developed in China, allow users to communicate keywords considered sensitive in China, when compressed, encrypted or hidden in game state or chat channels.
KW - covert channel
KW - plausible deniability
KW - steganography
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105011347853
U2 - 10.1145/3714393.3726489
DO - 10.1145/3714393.3726489
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:105011347853
T3 - CODASPY 2025 - Proceedings of the 15th ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy
SP - 395
EP - 400
BT - CODASPY 2025 - Proceedings of the 15th ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
Y2 - 4 June 2025 through 6 June 2025
ER -