Design and analysis of DDoS mitigating network architecture.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Cybersecurity
• Network Engineering

Background:

• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, particularly volumetric attacks, pose a significant threat to e-commerce and online services.
• Current reactive filtering methods for DDoS mitigation are often insufficient and complex.
• Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) offer a promising hardware-based security solution.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel network architecture for mitigating DDoS attacks.
• To leverage Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) for enhanced network security.
• To reduce computational overhead in security mechanism implementation.

Main Methods:

• A new network architecture is proposed, utilizing Transient Effect Ring Oscillator PUFs.
• Routers in the proposed architecture generate and verify capabilities using PUFs.
• Simulations were conducted using the open-source Network Simulator (NS-3) for large-scale testing.

Main Results:

• The proposed architecture effectively mitigates DDoS attacks, particularly volumetric types.
• Hardware-based capability generation using PUFs significantly reduces computational overhead.
• The system provides the destination with complete control over incoming traffic.
• Network throughput remained largely unaffected even with 80% attacker traffic.

Conclusions:

• The novel PUF-based network architecture offers an efficient and robust solution against DDoS attacks.
• This hardware-based approach enhances security while maintaining high network performance.
• The proposed system ensures uninterrupted service for legitimate users during attack events.