Back to BMAC Page
Building a Secure and Resilient Network Infrastructure
Dr. Daniel F. Massey
Research Assistant Professor, University of Southern California Computer
Science Department and
Project Leader, USC Information Science Institute, Washington, D.C.
This talk examines the security and resilience of two fundamental
infrastructure protocols; the BGP routing system that provides global
reachability and (briefly) the Domain Name System (DNS) that provides
essential naming information. Despite the Internet's tremendous growth
and fundamental change in form, these critical network infrastructure
protocols remain tied to a simple fault model. In today's complex
large-scale system, the core Internet protocols face frequent
operational errors, incorrect protocol implementations (or protocol
under specifications), unexpected complex interactions between
elements, and intentional attacks. This talk fist examine some BGP
routing problems observed in the Internet, such as the complex
interactions between routing and events such as the recent worm
attacks. While one could argue that the current problems call for
restarting with a complete redesign, it is important to note the core
Internet protocols have clearly succeeded to achieve their original
aims and their deployed base in measured in millions of systems and
billions of dollars. Rather than restarting from scratch, the
challenge lies in both advancing the system in fundamental ways while
still respecting operational constraints and deployed system bases. To
address these challenges, the talk presents enhancements that can be
deployed to enhance resilience through techniques such as consistency
checking and enhancing protocols with diagnosis information. Using
these techniques, the talks show how path vector algorithms can be
enhanced to improve convergence by orders of magnitude, exploit
existing data for enhanced protection against human error, and
ultimately provide better data delivery. In DNS, the talk shows how
cryptographic solutions can be added to the system for authentication.
In the broader sense, the results suggest that a multi-fence framework
for building a truly resilient Internet infrastructure is both
achievable and effective.
Back to BMAC Page