EAGER: Exploring Security Issues in Next-Generation Networking Infrastructure

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

The Internet provides data communication that is essential for business, personal communication, E-Government, and entertainment. Our society's reliance on the broad availability of data communication networks makes these system a critical part of today's infrastructure. The need to support emerging technologies and networking paradigms has led to numerous ongoing efforts to develop novel network architectures that can improve and replace existing network systems. Many new network designs use a virtualized network infrastructure on which networks with different protocol stacks can be instantiated. To implement such dynamic deployment of data communication networks, programmable routers with embedded packet processing systems are used. The introduction of these new systems into the network opens the doors for new cyber attacks that use the network or target the network itself. This work will study the security issues that arise in this new virtualized and programmable networking environment and develop techniques that can be used to identify, mitigate, and possibly avoid attacks. The researchers will study how attacks can be characterized in next-generation network and how novel anomaly detection algorithms can be developed. The algorithms will use cooperation between protocol layers and distributed detection mechanisms between nodes and autonomous systems to achieve high detection capabilities that aid in defending the network infrastructure. The ability of programmable nodes to aid in the detection process will be leveraged. The intellectual merit of this work lies in providing insights on vulnerabilities and possible defenses in emerging network designs, which are fundamentally different from today's Internet. The broader impact of this work aims at providing the technology necessary to protecting the next-generation Internet from cyber attacks.