TR CCIT 477, Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion, March 2004.
Abstract:
We propose a framework and
methodology for quantifying the effect of denial of service (DoS) attacks on a
distributed system. We present a systematic study of the resistance of
gossip-based multicast protocols to DoS attacks. We show that even distributed
and randomized gossip-based protocols, which eliminate single points of failure,
do not necessarily eliminate vulnerabilities to DoS attacks. We propose Drum --
a simple gossip-based multicast protocol that eliminates such vulnerabilities.
Drum was implemented in Java and tested on a large cluster. We show, using
closed-form mathematical analysis, simulations, and empirical tests, that Drum
survives severe DoS attacks.