Towards Multipath TCP Aware Security Technologies

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is a proposed extension to TCP that enables a number of performance advantages that have not been offered before. While the protocol specification is close to being finalized, there still remain some unaddressed challenges regarding the deployment and security implications of the protocol. This work attempts to tackle some of these concerns by proposing and implementing MPTCP aware security services and deploying them inside a proof of concept MPTCP proxy. The aim is to enable hosts, even those without native MPTCP support, to securely benefit from the MPTCP performance advantages. Our evaluations show that the security services that are implemented enable proper intrusion detection and prevention to thwart potential attacks as well as threshold rules to prevent denial of service (DoS) attacks.