Efficient and secure source authentication with packet passports

  • Authors:
  • Xin Liu;Xiaowei Yang;David Wetherall;Thomas Anderson

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, University of California, Irvine;Department of Computer Science, University of California, Irvine;Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington;Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington

  • Venue:
  • SRUTI'06 Proceedings of the 2nd conference on Steps to Reducing Unwanted Traffic on the Internet - Volume 2
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

A key challenge in combating Denial of Service (DoS) attacks is to reliably identify attack sources from packet contents. If a source can be reliably identified, routers can stop an attack by filtering packets from the attack sources without causing collateral damage to legitimate traffic. This task is difficult because attackers may spoof arbitrary packet contents to hide their identities. This paper proposes a packet passport system to address this challenge. A packet passport efficiently and securely authenticates the source of a packet. A packet with a valid passport must have originated from the claimed source. The packet passport system can be incrementally deployed without introducing extra control messages. It also provides incentives for early adoption: a domain that deploys packet passport system can prevent other domains from spoofing its source identifiers. Our preliminary analysis suggests that the packet passport system can be implemented at high-speed routers with today's technologies.