Pervasive Random Beacon in the Internet for Covert Coordination

A random beacon periodically outputs a random number and was introduced by Rabin [12] to secure remote transaction. We consider a random beacon that is pervasive in the sense that, it is available everywhere, and accesses to the beacon blends with normal activities. With a pervasive beacon, it is difficult to disrupt the beacon and detect accesses to it. As a result, the pervasiveness of the beacon can facilitate covert coordination, whereby a large collection of agents covertly decide on a common action. In this paper, we discuss the desirable properties of a pervasive random beacon which can be used for covert coordination, and describe how such a beacon can be found in the Internet based on major stock market indices closing values. We also investigate how such a covert coordination can be used, in particular, in coordinating distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Finally, we explore ways to, in a limited manner, disrupt the beacon.