IMPROVING INTERNET RELATIONSHIP TOPOLOGY BY RISK ASSESSMENT

Abstract

The Internet operates and is constantly growing due to global routing system, the scalability of which is indisputable. But this system has certain information security flaws, due to which there are threats of deliberate distortion of packet transmission paths in order to violate the integrity, accessibility and confidentiality of information. Such actions are called "route hijacks". The mechanisms of the mentioned cyberattacks are aimed at imposing on misconception or, in other words spoofing the network topology derived from routing tables, while mechanisms for validation of this information in the global routing protocol BGP-4 are absent. This vulnerability cannot be completely addressed without replacing the BGP-4 protocol, which could take another decade.

Reducing the potential impact of cyber attacks on global routing requires a new methodology for assessing the effectiveness of interconnections and improving the network topology. Thus, the paper studies  usage of a modern risk-oriented approach, when the risk owner uses the value of risk as a measure of information security. The proposed methodology is based on the analysis of the topology of the Internet, subjects, objects and processes of global routing. The owner of the risk is determined, the risks themselves are identified.

New metrics have been introduced to assess the risk of route interception - a trust metric and a significance metric. The trust metric characterizes the probability of a  route hijack at a certain node and depends on the metric distance between the risk owner and the target node. The concept of subject of trust and  object of trust is introduced. Significance metrics characterizes the level of maximum damage associated with the area of the expected spread of the spoofed route. It is complex and takes into account the number of network prefixes routed through the target node, the weight of the prefix according to its length, and the distance between the source of the prefix and the target node. Risk assessment based on these metrics serves as a measure of the effectiveness of the topology in protecting against interception of routes, and provides an opportunity to make decisions on improving interconnections, using risk to measure the information security.