Securing ARP and DHCP for mitigating link layer attacks

Abstract

Network security has become a concern with the rapid growth and expansion of the Internet. While there are several ways to provide security for communications at the application, transport, or network layers, the data link layer security has not yet been adequately addressed. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) are link layer protocols that are essential for network operation. They were designed without any security features. Therefore, they are vulnerable to a number of attacks such as the rogue DHCP server, DHCP starvation, host impersonation, man-in-the-middle, and denial of service attacks. Vulnerabilities in ARP and DHCP threaten the operation of any network. The existing solutions to secure ARP and DHCP could not mitigate DHCP starvation and host impersonation attacks. This work introduces a new solution to secure ARP and DHCP for preventing and mitigating these LAN attacks. The proposed solution provides integrity and authenticity for ARP and DHCP messages. Security properties and performance of the proposed schemes are investigated and compared to other related schemes.