Re: "Is BGP safe yet?" test

[Amir Herzberg <amir.lists () gmail com>]

Randy said,
> > From a practical standpoint, this doesn't actually tell the whole truth
>
> indeed.  route origin validation, while a good thing, does not make
> bgp safe from attack.  this marketing fantasy is being propagated;
> but is BS.
>
> origin validation was designed to reduce the massive number of problems
> cause by fat figured configuration errors by operators.  it will not
> even get all of those; but it will greatly improve things.
>
> but it provides almost zero protection against malicious attack.  the
> attacker merely has to prepend (in the formal, not cisco display) the
> 'correct' origin AS to their malicious announcement.

Randy, I agree of course, that supporting ROV is far from sufficient to
ensure BGP security. However, I disagree that this is `zero protection'
since the effectiveness of the attack may be much reduced when the attacker
has to prepend. Note also that if one combines ASPA, the protection would
be even better. The simulation results in our SIGCOMM'2016 give some idea
of these benefits (imprecise, of course).

I _think_ Randy will agree; but then again, Randy loves to surprise , so
... maybe not.
-- 
Amir Herzberg

Comcast professor of Security Innovations, University of Connecticut

Homepage: https://sites.google.com/site/amirherzberg/home

Foundations of Cyber-Security (part I: applied crypto, part II:
network-security):
https://www.researchgate.net/project/Foundations-of-Cyber-Security



On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 3:10 PM Randy Bush <randy () psg com> wrote:

> > From a practical standpoint, this doesn't actually tell the whole truth
>
> indeed.  route origin validation, while a good thing, does not make
> bgp safe from attack.  this marketing fantasy is being propagated;
> but is BS.
>
> origin validation was designed to reduce the massive number of problems
> cause by fat figured configuration errors by operators.  it will not
> even get all of those; but it will greatly improve things.
>
> but it provides almost zero protection against malicious attack.  the
> attacker merely has to prepend (in the formal, not cisco display) the
> 'correct' origin AS to their malicious announcement.
>
> randy