The Internet has evolved greatly from its original incarnation. For instance, the vast majority of current Internet usage is data retrieval and service access, whereas the architecture was designed around host-to-host applications such as telnet and ftp. Moreover, the original Internet was a purely transparent carrier of packets, but now the various network stakeholders use middleboxes to improve security and accelerate applications. To adapt to these changes, we propose the Data-Oriented Network Architecture (DONA), which involves a clean-slate redesign of Internet naming and name resolution.

/pdf/a-data-oriented-and-beyond-network-architecture-4vowcle0uu.pdf

A data-oriented (and beyond) network architecture

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) flooding attacks are one of the biggest concerns for security professionals. DDoS flooding attacks are typically explicit attempts to disrupt legitimate users' access to services. Attackers usually gain access to a large number of computers by exploiting their vulnerabilities to set up attack armies (i.e., Botnets). Once an attack army has been set up, an attacker can invoke a coordinated, large-scale attack against one or more targets. Developing a comprehensive defense mechanism against identified and anticipated DDoS flooding attacks is a desired goal of the intrusion detection and prevention research community. However, the development of such a mechanism requires a comprehensive understanding of the problem and the techniques that have been used thus far in preventing, detecting, and responding to various DDoS flooding attacks. In this paper, we explore the scope of the DDoS flooding attack problem and attempts to combat it. We categorize the DDoS flooding attacks and classify existing countermeasures based on where and when they prevent, detect, and respond to the DDoS flooding attacks. Moreover, we highlight the need for a comprehensive distributed and collaborative defense approach. Our primary intention for this work is to stimulate the research community into developing creative, effective, efficient, and comprehensive prevention, detection, and response mechanisms that address the DDoS flooding problem before, during and after an actual attack.

/pdf/a-survey-of-defense-mechanisms-against-distributed-denial-of-36i5dbdzy6.pdf

A Survey of Defense Mechanisms Against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Flooding Attacks

Connectivity in today's enterprise networks is regulated by a combination of complex routing and bridging policies, along with various interdiction mechanisms such as ACLs, packet filters, and other middleboxes that attempt to retrofit access control onto an otherwise permissive network architecture. This leads to enterprise networks that are inflexible, fragile, and difficult to manage.

To address these limitations, we offer SANE, a protection architecture for enterprise networks. SANE defines a single protection layer that governs all connectivity within the enterprise. All routing and access control decisions are made by a logically-centralized server that grants access to services by handing out capabilities (encrypted source routes) according to declarative access control policies (e.g., "Alice can access http server foo"). Capabilities are enforced at each switch, which are simple and only minimally trusted. SANE offers strong attack resistance and containment in the face of compromise, yet is practical for everyday use. Our prototype implementation shows that SANE could be deployed in current networks with only a few modifications, and it can easily scale to networks of tens of thousands of nodes.

/pdf/sane-a-protection-architecture-for-enterprise-networks-26akllvvun.pdf

SANE: a protection architecture for enterprise networks

We present the design and evaluation of TVA, a network architecture that limits the impact of Denial of Service (DoS) floods from the outset. Our work builds on earlier work on capabilities in which senders obtain short-term authorizations from receivers that they stamp on their packets. We address the full range of possible attacks against communication between pairs of hosts, including spoofed packet floods, network and host bottlenecks, and router state exhaustion. We use simulation to show that attack traffic can only degrade legitimate traffic to a limited extent, significantly outperforming previously proposed DoS solutions. We use a modified Linux kernel implementation to argue that our design can run on gigabit links using only inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware. Our design is also suitable for transition into practice, providing incremental benefit for incremental deployment.

/pdf/a-dos-limiting-network-architecture-fla8p3c7ik.pdf

A DoS-limiting network architecture

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are an ongoing problem in today's Internet, where packets from a large number of compromised hosts thwart the paths to the victim site and/or overload the victim machines. In a newly proposed future Internet architecture, Named Data Networking (NDN), end users request desired data by sending Interest packets, and the network delivers Data packets upon request only, effectively eliminating many existing DDoS attacks. However, an NDN network can be subject to a new type of DDoS attack, namely Interest packet flooding. In this paper we investigate effective solutions to mitigate Interest flooding. We show that NDN's inherent properties of storing per packet state on each router and maintaining flow balance (i.e., one Interest packet retrieves at most one Data packet) provides the basis for effective DDoS mitigation algorithms. Our evaluation through simulations shows that the solution can quickly and effectively respond and mitigate Interest flooding.

https://cial.csie.ncku.edu.tw/presentation/group_pdf/(IFIP%202013)%20Interest%20Flooding%20Attack%20and%20Countermeasures%20in%20Named%20Data%20Networking.pdf

Interest flooding attack and countermeasures in Named Data Networking

One of the fundamental limitations of the Internet is the inability of a packet flow recipient to halt disruptive flows before they consume the recipient's network link resources. Critical infrastructures and businesses alike are vulnerable to DoS attacks or flash-crowds that can incapacitate their networks with traffic floods. Unfortunately, current mechanisms require per-flow state at routers, ISP collaboration, or the deployment of an overlay infrastructure to defend against these events. In this paper, we present SIFF, a Stateless Internet Flow Filter, which allows an end-host to selectively stop individual flows from reaching its network, without any of the common assumptions listed above. We divide all network traffic into two classes, privileged (prioritized packets subject to recipient control) and unprivileged (legacy traffic). Privileged channels are established through a capability exchange handshake. Capabilities are dynamic and verified statelessly by the routers in the network, and can be revoked by quenching update messages to an offending host. SIFF is transparent to legacy clients and servers, but only updated hosts will enjoy the benefits of it.

A. Yaar

Papers

SIFF: a stateless Internet flow filter to mitigate DDoS flooding attacks