Check out the new USENIX Web site.
USENIX, The Advanced Computing Systems Association

NSDI '08 – Abstract

Pp. 365–378 of the Proceedings

Passport: Secure and Adoptable Source Authentication

Xin Liu, Ang Li, and Xiaowei Yang, University of California, Irvine; David Wetherall, Intel Research Seattle and University of Washington

Abstract

We present the design and evaluation of Passport, a system that allows source addresses to be validated within the network. Passport uses efficient, symmetric-key cryptography to place tokens on packets that allow each autonomous system (AS) along the network path to independently verify that a source address is valid. It leverages the routing system to efficiently distribute the symmetric keys used for verification, and is incrementally deployable without upgrading hosts. We have implemented Passport with Click and XORP and evaluated the design via micro-benchmarking, experiments on the Deterlab, security analysis, and adoptability modeling. We find that Passport is plausible for gigabit links, and can mitigate reflector attacks even without separate denial-of-service defenses. Our adoptability modeling shows that Passport provides stronger security and deployment incentives than alternatives such as ingress filtering. This is because the ISPs that adopt it protect their own addresses from being spoofed at each other's networks even when the overall deployment is small.
  • View the full text of this paper in HTML and PDF. Listen to the presentation in MP3 format.

    The Proceedings are published as a collective work, © 2008 by the USENIX Association. All Rights Reserved. Rights to individual papers remain with the author or the author's employer. Permission is granted for the noncommercial reproduction of the complete work for educational or research purposes. USENIX acknowledges all trademarks within this paper.
To become a USENIX member, please see our Membership Information.

Last changed: 11 Aug 2008 mn