RE: Blackholes and IXs and Completing the Attack.

From: Ben Butler (no email)
Date: Sat Feb 02 2008 - 17:42:22 EST

  • Next message: Thomas Kühne: "Re: IPv6 Connectivity Saga (part n+1)"

     "If you're trying to do it on a /32 basis, I doubt you'd find too many
    border router operators interested in accepting a route that small, but
    I may be wrong."

    Well then they wouldn't be peering with this route reflector in the
    first place.

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Tomas L. Byrnes [mailto:]
    Sent: 02 February 2008 20:39
    To: Ben Butler; Paul Vixie;
    Subject: RE: Blackholes and IXs and Completing the Attack.

    You could achieve the exact same result simply by not advertising the
    network to your peers, or by advertising a bogus route (prefixing a
    known bogon AS for the addresses you want null-routed). I realize you
    would have to subnet/deaggregate your netblocks, and therefore could
    wind up with a prefix-length issue for peers who won't accept routes
    longer than a certain mask, in some cases, but if you are already being
    DDOSed, this should represent SOME improvement.

    If you're trying to do it on a /32 basis, I doubt you'd find too many
    border router operators interested in accepting a route that small, but
    I may be wrong.

    The bigger issue with all these approaches is that they run afoul of a
    patent applied for by AT&T:

    http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u
    =%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=200
    60031575&OS=20060031575&RS=20060031575

    USPTO App Number 20060031575

    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: [mailto:] On Behalf
    > Of Ben Butler
    > Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2008 12:17 PM
    > To: Paul Vixie;
    > Subject: RE: Blackholes and IXs and Completing the Attack.
    >
    >
    > Hi,
    >
    > I was not proposing he Null routing of the attack source in the other
    > ISPs network but the destination in my network being Null routed as a
    > destination from your network out.
    >
    > This has no danger to the other network as it is my network that is
    > going to be my IP space that is blackholed in your network, and the
    > space blackholed is going to be an address that is being knocked of
    > the air anyway under DoS and we are trying to minimise collateral
    > damage. I cant see where the risk to the large NSP is - given that
    > the route reflector will only reflect /32s that legitimately originate

    > (as a destination not a source) in the AS announcing them as please
    > blackhole.
    >
    > For complete clarity: AS13005 announces 213.170.128.0/19 and has its
    > route object in RIPE as being announced by AS13005.
    > My router at IX - BENIX say - announces 213.170.128.1/32 to the router

    > reflector their, the announcement from my IX assigned address
    > 212.121.34.30 is known to be my router on the exchange, and I am
    > announcing a /32 from my AS for a route object registered as being
    > announced by my AS - so the reflector accepts my announcement and
    > reflects it to any other members that choose to peer with this
    > reflector - effectively this is a please blackhole this destination in
    > AS13005 - the other members that receive this announcement can then
    > deal with it in anyway they see fit from ignoring it to setting
    > next-hop 192.0.2.1 -> Null0.
    >
    > The effect of this would be that any BotNet controlled hosts in the
    > other member network would now be able to drop any attack traffic in
    > their network on destination at their customer aggregation routers.
    >
    > I think you might have thought I was suggesting we blackhole sources
    > in other peoples networks - this is definatly not what I was saying.
    >
    > So, given we all now understand each other - why is no one doing the
    > above?
    >
    > At the end of the day if an IX member doesn't want the announcements
    > don't peer with the blackhole reflector, simple, and it will get Null
    > routed as soon as it hits my edge router at the IX - it would just
    > seem more sensible to enable people to block the traffic before it
    > traverses the IX and further back in their own networks.
    >
    > So?????
    >
    > Ben
    >
    >
    >
    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: [mailto:] On Behalf
    > Of Paul Vixie
    > Sent: 02 February 2008 17:32
    > To:
    > Subject: Re: Blackholes and IXs and Completing the Attack.
    >
    >
    > ("Ben Butler") writes:
    >
    > > ...
    > > This hopefully will ensure a relatively protected router
    > that is only
    > > accessible from the edge routers we want and also secured to only
    > > accept filtered announcements for black holing and in consequence
    > > enable the system to be trusted similar to Team Cymaru.
    > > ...
    >
    > This sounds like another attempt to separate the Internet's control
    > plane from its data plane, and most such attempts do succeed and are
    > helpful (like NSP OOB, or like enterprise-level anycast of DNS).
    > However, I'm not sure that remote triggered blackholes are a good
    > direction, worthy of the protection you're proposing, for three
    > reasons.
    >
    > First, because large NSP's simply cannot afford the risk associated
    > with letting a third party, automatically and without controls or
    > audits, decide in real time what sources or destinations shall become
    > unreachable. With all respect (which is a lot) for spamhaus and cymru

    > and even MAPS (which I had a hand in, back in the day), feeding BGP
    > null-routes to a multinational backbone is a privilege that ISO9000
    > and SarBox and liability insurance providers don't usually want to
    > extend.
    >
    > Second, because many backbone routers in use today can't do policy
    > routing routing (which is in this case dropping packets because their
    > source address, not their destination address, has a particular
    > community associated with it) at line speed. Note, this is
    > many-not-all
    > -- I'm perfectly aware that lots of backbone routers can do this but
    > not everybody has them or can afford them and those who have them tend

    > to be the multinational NSPs discussed earlier.
    > To prevent our DDoS protection reflexes from lowering an attacker's
    > cost (by automatically blackholing victims to protect the nonvictims),

    > we have to be able to blackhole the abusive traffic by source, not by
    > destination.
    >
    > Third, because many OPNs (other people's networks) still don't filter
    > on source address on their customer-facing edge, and thus allow
    > spoofed-source traffic to exit toward "the core" or toward a victim's
    > NSP who cannot filter by source due to path ambiguities inherent in
    > "the core", any wide scale implementation of this, even if we could
    > get trusted automation of it at scale and even if everybody had
    > policy-routing-at-like-speed, would just push the attackers toward
    > spoofed-source. That means a huge amount of work and money for the
    > world, without changing the endgame for attackers and victims at all.
    > (See BCP38 and SAC004 for prior rants on this controversial topic.)
    >


  • Next message: Thomas Kühne: "Re: IPv6 Connectivity Saga (part n+1)"





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