Randy's Work Blog

Andreas Reuter, Randy Bush, Italo Cunha, Ethan Katz-Bassett, Thomas C. Schmidt, Matthias Wählisch; Towards a Rigorous Methodology for Measuring Adoption of RPKI Route Validation and Filtering; Applied Networking Research Workshop; Montréal July 2018

A proposal to improve routing security—Route Origin Authorization (ROA)—has been standardized. A ROA specifies which network is allowed to announce a set of Internet destinations. While some networks now specify ROAs, little is known about whether other networks check routes they receive against these ROAs, a process known as Route Origin Validation (ROV). Which networks blindly accept invalid routes? Which reject them outright? Which de-preference them if alternatives exist?

Recent analysis attempts to use uncontrolled experiments to characterize ROV adoption by comparing valid routes and invalid routes. However, we argue that gaining a solid understanding of ROV adoption is impossible using currently available data sets and techniques. Instead, we devise a verifiable methodology of controlled experiments for measuring ROV. Our measurements suggest that, although some ISPs are not observed using invalid routes in uncontrolled experiments, they are actually using different routes for (non-security) traffic engineering purposes, without performing ROV. We conclude with presenting three AS that do implement ROV as confirmed by the operators.

Tobias Fiebig, Franziska Lichtblau, Florian Streibelt, Thorben
Kru?ger, Pieter Lexis, Randy Bush and Anja Feldmann Learning from the Past: Designing Secure Network Protocols; in Cybersecurity Best Practices:
Lo?sungen zur Erho?hung der Cyberresilienz fu?r Unternehmen und Beho?rden

Network protocols define how networked computer systems exchange data. As they define all aspects of this communication, the way they are designed is also security sensitive. If communication is supposed to be encrypted, this has to be outlined in the protocol’s specification. If services implementing the protocol should allow for authen- tication, this has to be defined in the protocol. Hence, the way a protocol is designed is elemental for the security of systems later implementing it. Security by design starts with the protocol definition. Especially in today’s fast-moving environment, with cloud services and the Internet of Things, engineers constantly have to develop new proto- cols. In this chapter, we derive guidelines for designing new protocols securely, as well as recommendations on how existing protocols can be adjusted to become more secure. We base these recommendations on our analysis of how – historical – protocols were designed and which underlying design decisions made their corresponding implemen- tations susceptible to security issues.