Counting Packets Sent Between Arbitrary Internet Hosts

Explore a 19-minute conference talk from USENIX FOCI '14 that presents a novel side-channel technique for inferring packet exchanges between arbitrary Internet hosts. Learn how researchers Jeffrey Knockel and Jedidiah R. Crandall from the University of New Mexico demonstrate a method to detect communication between two machines, with at least one running Linux. Discover how this technique works for ICMP, UDP, and TCP connections without requiring the machines to be idle. Gain insights into the implementation of this approach and examine the results of a proof-of-concept experiment that validates its effectiveness in measuring host communication.