Emulation versus simulation: A case study of TCP-targeted denial of service attacks

—In this paper, we investigate the applicability of simulation and emulation for denial of service (DoS) attack experimentation. As a case study, we consider low-rate TCP-targeted DoS attacks. We design constructs and tools for emulation testbeds to achieve a level of control comparable to simulation tools. Through a careful sensitivity analysis, we expose difficulties in obtaining meaningful measurements from the DETER and Emulab testbeds with default system settings, and find dramatic differences between simulation and emulation results for DoS experiments. Our results also reveal that software routers such as Click provide a flexible experimental platform, but require understanding and manipulation of the underlying network device drivers. We compare simulation and testbed results to a simple analytical model for predicting the average size of the congestion window of a TCP flow under a low-rate TCP-targeted attack, as a function of the DoS attack frequency. We find that the ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: TRIDENTCOM
• Authors: Roman Chertov, Sonia Fahmy, Ness B. Shroff
• Keywords: Dos Attack, Low-rate Tcp-targeted Attacks, Simulations, TRIDENTCOM 2006