Beware of BGP attacks

Abstract

This note attempts to raise awareness within the network research community about the security of the interdomain routing infrastructure. We identify several attack objectives and mechanisms, assuming that one or more BGP routers have been compromised. Then, we review the existing and proposed countermeasures, showing that they are either generally ineffective (route filtering), or probably too heavyweight to deploy (S-BGP). We also review several recent proposals, and conclude by arguing that a significant research effort is urgently needed in the area of routing security.