Tutorial 3: Infrastructure Protection from Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

With BotNets proliferating around the world exponentially, Internet infrastructure which includes e-commerce infrastructure, financial infrastructure, critical infrastructure, national infrastructure, etc. can be easily overwhelmed by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Worms of Mass Destruction are used by criminals to spread terror and to destabilize infrastructure. With increasing dependence on Internet infrastructure for banking, e-commerce, telecom, utilities, and national security, it is therefore imperative that system architects understand the new threats and understand the mitigation tools and techniques available. This tutorial will explain the extent of the problem, the tools used by the attackers, and problems with using routers, switches, firewalls and intrusion prevention systems to mitigate DDoS attacks. This will be followed by a survey of specialized DDoS mitigation tools and techniques and their benefits in a vendor neutral manner. Current research in top universities centered on this area will be discussed along with trends in the attack patterns. To conclude, future research directions will be discussed so that the attendees get a complete picture.