Global Communication Guarantees in the Presence of Adversaries

Abstract

DDoS attacks have been plaguing the Internet for over 20 years. For every defense mechanism invented, attackers find a new way to circumvent it. Is it possible to fundamentally prevent DDoS attacks and achieve global communication guarantees? Since the Internet is a public resource, what does it even mean to prevent DDoS - since the adversary can also claim to be communicating "legitimately". In this talk we will unravel the different forms of DDoS attacks by first discussing how to construct meaningful definitions, and second showing how to achieve communication guarantees. This talk then demonstrates how global communication guarantees can be achieved in the SCION secure Internet architecture.