Date Published: August 2018
Comments Due:
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Author(s)
William Haag (NIST), Douglas Montgomery (NIST), Allen Tan (MITRE), William Barker (Dakota Consulting)
Announcement
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the internet to modern business and society in general. The internet is not a single network, but rather a complex grid of independent interconnected networks that relies on a protocol known as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to route traffic to its intended destination.
Unfortunately, BGP was not designed with security in mind and a route hijack attack can deny access to internet services, misdeliver traffic to malicious endpoints, and cause routing instability. A technique known as BGP route origin validation (ROV) is designed to protect against route hijacking.
The NCCoE, together with several technology vendors, has developed proof-of-concept demonstrations of BGP ROV implementation designed to improve the security of the internet's routing infrastructure.
This cybersecurity practice guide contains step-by-step example solutions using commercially available technologies. By implementing the example solutions, organizations can better secure the safe delivery of internet traffic to its intended destination, reduce the number of outages due to BGP route hijacks, and make more informed decisions regarding routes that may be compromised.
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the default routing protocol to route traffic among internet domains. While BGP performs adequately in identifying viable paths that reflect local routing policies and preferences to destinations, the lack of built-in security allows the protocol to be exploited by route hijacking. Route hijacking occurs when an entity accidentally or maliciously alters an intended route. Such attacks can (1) deny access to internet services, (2) detour internet traffic to permit eavesdropping and to facilitate on-path attacks on end points (sites), (3) misdeliver internet network traffic to malicious end points, (4) undermine internet protocol (IP) address-based reputation and filtering systems, and (5) cause routing instability in the internet. This document describes a security platform that demonstrates how to improve the security of inter-domain routing traffic exchange. The platform provides route origin validation (ROV) by using the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) in a manner that mitigates some misconfigurations and malicious attacks associated with route hijacking. The example solutions and architectures presented here are based upon standards-based, open-source, and commercially available products.
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the default routing protocol to route traffic among internet domains. While BGP performs adequately in identifying viable paths that reflect local routing policies and preferences to destinations, the lack of built-in security allows the protocol to be exploited...
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The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the default routing protocol to route traffic among internet domains. While BGP performs adequately in identifying viable paths that reflect local routing policies and preferences to destinations, the lack of built-in security allows the protocol to be exploited by route hijacking. Route hijacking occurs when an entity accidentally or maliciously alters an intended route. Such attacks can (1) deny access to internet services, (2) detour internet traffic to permit eavesdropping and to facilitate on-path attacks on end points (sites), (3) misdeliver internet network traffic to malicious end points, (4) undermine internet protocol (IP) address-based reputation and filtering systems, and (5) cause routing instability in the internet. This document describes a security platform that demonstrates how to improve the security of inter-domain routing traffic exchange. The platform provides route origin validation (ROV) by using the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) in a manner that mitigates some misconfigurations and malicious attacks associated with route hijacking. The example solutions and architectures presented here are based upon standards-based, open-source, and commercially available products.
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Keywords
AS; autonomous systems; BGP; Border Gateway Protocol; DDoS; denial-of-service (DoS) attacks; internet service provider; ISP; Regional Internet Registry; Resource Public Key Infrastructure; RIR; ROA; route hijack; route origin authorization; route origin validation; routing domain; ROV; RPKI
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