Vulnerabilities in distance-indexed IP traceback schemes

: In order to counter Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks using spoofed source addresses, many IP traceback schemes have been proposed in the last few years. Among them, distanceindexed probabilistic packet marking schemes appear to be very attractive. In this paper, we first discover two intrinsic vulnerabilities in these schemes. Substantiated by efficacy analysis and numerical results, several exploits are designed to take advantage of these vulnerabilities in an efficient manner when compared with the traceback effort attempted by victims. Consequently, we show that the design goal of these schemes can be compromised in practice. Further, we discuss these vulnerabilities in a general context relevant to network protocols and examine a few possible alternatives.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: IJSN
• Authors: Jianping Pan, Lin Cai, Xuemin Shen
• Keywords: IJSN 2007, Intrinsic Vulnerabilities, Source Addresses, Vulnerabilities