ABSTRACT
We believe that a network, to be survivable, must be heterogeneous. Just like a species that draws on a small gene pool can succumb to a single environmental threat, so a homogeneous network is vulnerable to a malicious attack that exploits a single weakness common to all of its components. In contrast, in a network in which each critical functionality is provided by a diverse set of protocols and implementations, attacks that focus on a weakness of one such protocol or implementation will not be able to bring down the entire network, even though all elements are not be bulletproof and even if some of components are compromised.Following this survivability through heterogeneity philosophy, we propose a new survivability paradigm, called heterogeneous networking, for improving a network's defense capabilities. Rather than following the current trend of converging towards single solutions to provide the desired functionality at every element of the network architecture, this methodology calls for systematically increasing the network's heterogeneity without sacrificing its interoperability.
- A. Avizienis. The n-version aproach to fault-tolerant software. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, SE-11(12):1491-1501, December 1985.Google ScholarDigital Library
- A. Avizienis and L. Chen. On the implementation of n-version programming for software fault-tolerance during program execution. In Proceedings of International Computer Software and Applications Conference, pages 149-155, 1977.Google Scholar
- C. Cowan and C. Pu. Immunix: Survivability through specialization. In Proceedings of SEI Information Survivability Workshop, San Diego, California, USA, February 1997.Google Scholar
- D. Eckhardt and L. Lee. A theoretical basis for the analysis of multiversion software subject to coincident errors. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, SE-11(12):1511-1517, 1985.Google ScholarDigital Library
- R. Ellison, D. Fisher, R. Linger, H. Lipson, T. Longstaff, and N. Mead. Survivability: Protecting your critical systems. IEEE Internet Computing, 3(6):55-63, November/December 1999. Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. Forrest, A. Somayaji, and D. Ackley. Building diverse computer systems. In Proceedings of the Sixth Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS-VI), pages 67-72, 1997. Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. Joseph and A. Avizienis. A fault tolerance approach to computer viruses. In Proceedings of the 1988 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pages 52-58, Oakland, California, USA, April 1988.Google ScholarCross Ref
- J. C. Knight and N. G. Leveson. An experimental evaluation of the assumption of independence in multiversion programming. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, SE-12(1):96-109, January 1986. Google ScholarDigital Library
- B. Littlewood, P. Popov, and L. Strigini. Modelling software design diversity - a review. ACM Computing Surveys, 33(2):177-208, June 2001. Google ScholarDigital Library
- J. Millen. Local reconfiguration policies. In Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, pages 48-56, Oakland, California, USA, May 1999.Google ScholarCross Ref
- S. Mitra, N. Saxena, and E. McCluskey. A design diversity metric and reliability analysis for redundant systems. In Proceedings of the 1999 International Test Conference, pages 662-671, Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA, September 1999. Google ScholarDigital Library
- E. Shek, S. Dao, Y. Zhang, D. van Buer, and G. Giuffrida. Intelligent information dissemination services in hybrid satellite-wireless networks. ACM Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET) Journal, 5(4):273-284, December 2000. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Heterogeneous networking: a new survivability paradigm
Recommendations
Analyzing effective mitigation of DDoS attack with software defined networking
AbstractDistributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack prevention research is mostly focused upon attack detection. Early attack detection facilitates the network administrator to quickly manage these attacks with least impact on the legitimate users. The ...
RTNSS: a routing trace-based network security system for preventing ARP spoofing attacks
The motion of address resolution protocol (ARP) is done without any problem in a general environment, but it is not considered from the security aspect; therefore, it risks being threatened by an attack from the network called ARP spoofing or ARP ...
Malware resistant networking using system diversity
SIGITE '05: Proceedings of the 6th conference on Information technology educationIn the biological world, species are known to ensure survival by introducing variations among individuals of the species, some of which may have superior survival characteristics in the event of certain environmental changes. While not precisely ...
Comments