High-Potency Models of LDoS Attack Against CUBIC + RED

Abstract

A TCP-targeted Low-rate denial of service (LDoS) attack exploits the vulnerabilities of TCP congestion control mechanism. CUBIC is the most widely used TCP congestion control algorithm today. CUBIC TCP increases the resilience against LDoS over traditional TCP. This paper explores high-potency patterns of the LDoS attack against CUBIC TCP under RED queue management scenario, and accordingly develops two attack models referring to maximizing attack potency. Theoretical analyses and extensive experiments are conducted to validate the proper function of the two models and evaluate their performance. Test results show that the two attack models can effectively throttle CUBIC TCP throughput. Under standard-configured network parameters, the number of TCP units damaged by one attack unit are up to about 21 and 26 respectively for our proposed two models, which represents an increase in attack potency of about 20%. And, our proposed models outperform the traditional attack model in terms of attack potency by at least 250%. In addition, with variations in different network parameters, these two models are still efficient and alternatively maximize the attack potency. Finally, an outline for the attack countermeasure is discussed. The present study offers a basis to explore new attack manners which may be exploited by attackers and excites defenders to develop new measurements against such attack.