Re: ROV++: Improved Deployable Defense against BGP Hijacking

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

Lars, peace, and thanks for your comments.

The reason that I didn't include the abstract is that this list , to my
understanding, is mostly for operational issues and discussions btwl
operators, and I didn't want to annoy subscribers by excessive text on an
academic paper.

For the same reason, I'm hesitant in responding to such technical questions
on this list, unless people are really interested in us doing this here;
maybe we should do such discussion off list? [I also have a bit of crazy
schedule in rest of this week and next, so I may be unable to response
promptly as I normally do; btw part of it is for giving tutorial on PKI and
participating in the CANS conference, if anybody interested, it's free ;
not that I understand why I agreed to do it :)

Cheers, Amir
-- 
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 Wed, Dec 9, 2020 at 1:42 PM Lars Prehn <lprehn () mpi-inf mpg de> wrote:

> Hi Amir,
>
> Neither providing an abstract nor the high-level takeaways of your work is
> a rather blunt way to promote your paper. I have a bunch of comments and
> questions, but I'm only a student so take them with a grain of salt.
>
> Regarding ROV++ v1: Let's modify your example in Figure 2a slightly such
> that AS 666 announces 1.2.3/24 also via AS 86. Further, let's say AS 88
> also uses ROV++ v1. Now, let's replay your example from the paper. AS 78
> still sees the same announcements you describe, and you recommend using a
> different, previously less-preferred route for 1.2/16. Yet, all routes
> available to AS 78 ultimately run into the same hijack behavior (which is
> not visible from AS 78's routing table alone). In a nutshell, your
> recommendation did not affect the outcome for 1.2.3/24---the traffic still
> goes towards the hijacker---but you effectively moved all the remaining
> traffic inside 1.2/16 from an optimal route to a sub-optimal one. Your
> approach not only may have no effects on the fate of the attacked traffic,
> but it may also mess with previously unaffected traffic.
>
> Regarding ROV++ v2: A simple sub-prefix hijack would still not yield a
> "valid" during your ROV. The moment you propagate such a route, you reject
> the entire idea of ROV. I understand that you drop the traffic, but your
> proposal still feels like a step backward. However, I'm not an expert on
> this---I might just be wrong.
>
> Regarding goals: I think that you only meet your first design goal since
> your definition of 'harm' is very restricted. The moment you add more
> dimensions, e.g., QoS degradation for previously unaffected traffic, this
> goal is no longer met.
>
> Regarding your evaluation: Which of CAIDA's serials do you use? Serial-1
> is known to miss a significant fraction of peering links, while Serial-2
> contains potentially non-existing links (as they are inferred using
> heuristics). Since coverage and validity of links varies drastically
> between serials (and for serial-2 even between snapshots), it is unclear to
> which degree your topology reflects reality. I like that you assumed the
> basic Gao-Rexford Model for the best-path decision process. Yet, you
> ignored that various networks deploy things like prefix-aggregation,
> peer-locking, or more-specifics (referring to /25 .. /30 IPv4 prefixes)
> filters. Further, I do not get why you randomly picked ROV-deploying
> networks. I am sure people like Job Snijders or Cecilia Testart could have
> provided you an up-to-date list of ASes that currently deploy ROV.  It is
> not clear to me why it is useful to look at scenarios in which those
> networks potentially no longer deploy ROV.
>
> Those are at least my thoughts. I hope they initiate some discussion.
> Best regards,
> Lars
> On 09.12.20 09:04, Amir Herzberg wrote:
>
> Hi, the paper:
>             ROV++: Improved Deployable Defense against BGP Hijacking
> will be presented in the NDSS'21 conference.
>
> The paper is available in:
>
> https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346777643_ROV_Improved_Deployable_Defense_against_BGP_Hijacking
>
> Feedback, by discussion here or by direct email to me, is welcome, thanks.
>
> btw, I keep most publications there (researchgate), incl. the drafts of
> `foundations of cybersecurity' ; the 1st part (mostly applied crypto) is in
> pretty advanced stage, feedback is also very welcome. URL in sig.
> --
> 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