In covert communication, the data stream is garbled and lasting by an unauthorized party. It’s very essential to know the difference between encrypted communication and covert communication. This makes the transmission virtually undetectable by administrators or users through a secret channel.

The word covert means “hidden or undetectable” and Channel is “communication mode”, hence a covert channel denotes an undetectable network of communication.

The red teamers use covert channels for data exfiltration in red teaming operations through a legitimate network and the data exfiltration is a process of secretly sharing data between two endpoints. Two endpoint users can use the covert channel for undetectable communication from network admin. It could be considered as steganography, but it is not exactly steganography. Such type of network is known as a covert channel which seems as generic traffic to any network monitor device/application and network admin.

In this post, you will learn how to steal information from the target machine through the undetectable network. Generally, the hacker uses a hidden network to escape themselves from firewall and IDS such.