Securing the border gateway routing protocol

Abstract

We analyze the security of the border gateway routing protocol and identify a number of vulnerabilities in its design and the corresponding threats. We then present a set of proposed modifications to the protocol which minimize or eliminate the most significant threats. The innovation we introduce is the protection of the second-to-last information contained in the autonomous path attributes by the digital signatures, and the use of techniques developed for detecting loops in path-finding protocols to verify the selected route's path information. With these techniques we are able to secure full path information in near constant space, and avoid the recursive protection mechanisms previously assumed necessary.