Certified Internet Coordinates

We address the issue of asserting the accuracy of coordinates advertised by nodes of Internet coordinate systems during distance estimations. Indeed, some nodes may lie deliberately about their coordinates to mount various attacks against applications and overlays. Our proposed method consists in two steps: 1) establish the correctness of a node's claimed coordinate (which leverages our previous work on securing the coordinates embedding phase using a Surveyor infrastructure); and 2) issue a time limited validity certificate for each verified coordinate. Validity periods are computed based on an analysis of coordinate inter-shift times observed on PlanetLab, and shown to follow a long-tail distribution (lognormal distribution in most cases, or Weibull distribution otherwise). The effectiveness of the coordinate certification method is validated by measuring the impact of a variety of attacks on distance estimates.