TY - GEN
T1 - Peer pressure
T2 - 2013 IEEE 33rd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, ICDCS 2013
AU - Schuchard, Max
AU - Thompson, Christopher
AU - Hopper, Nick
AU - Kim, Yongdae
PY - 2013/12/1
Y1 - 2013/12/1
N2 - Both academic research and historical incidents have shown that unstable BGP speakers can have extreme, undesirable impacts on network performance and reliability. Large amounts of time and energy have been invested in improving router stability. In this paper, we show how an adversary in control of a BGP speaker in a transit AS can cause a victim router in an arbitrary location on the Internet to become unstable. Through experimentation with both hardware and software routers, we examine the behavior of routers under abnormal conditions and come to three conclusions. First, that unexpected but perfectly legal BGP messages can place routers into those states with troubling ease. Second, that an adversary can implement attacks using these messages to disrupt the function of victim routers in arbitrary locations in the network. And third, modern best practices do not blunt the force of these attacks sufficiently. These conclusions lead us to recommend more rigorous testing of BGP implementations, focusing as much on protocol correctness as on software correctness.
AB - Both academic research and historical incidents have shown that unstable BGP speakers can have extreme, undesirable impacts on network performance and reliability. Large amounts of time and energy have been invested in improving router stability. In this paper, we show how an adversary in control of a BGP speaker in a transit AS can cause a victim router in an arbitrary location on the Internet to become unstable. Through experimentation with both hardware and software routers, we examine the behavior of routers under abnormal conditions and come to three conclusions. First, that unexpected but perfectly legal BGP messages can place routers into those states with troubling ease. Second, that an adversary can implement attacks using these messages to disrupt the function of victim routers in arbitrary locations in the network. And third, modern best practices do not blunt the force of these attacks sufficiently. These conclusions lead us to recommend more rigorous testing of BGP implementations, focusing as much on protocol correctness as on software correctness.
KW - BGP
KW - Router
KW - Security
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84893337296&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84893337296&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICDCS.2013.48
DO - 10.1109/ICDCS.2013.48
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84893337296
SN - 9780769550008
T3 - Proceedings - International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems
SP - 571
EP - 580
BT - Proceedings - 2013 IEEE 33rd International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, ICDCS 2013
Y2 - 8 July 2013 through 11 July 2013
ER -