"Roto-Rooting" your router

Abstract

Our work presents the first practical example of an entirely new class of network attacks - attacks that target the network infrastructure. Modern routers use general purpose programmable processors, and the software used for packet processing on these systems is potentially vulnerable to remote exploits. We describe a specific attack that can launch a devastating denial-of-service attack by sending just a single packet. We also show that there are effective defense techniques, based on processor monitoring, that can help in detecting and avoiding such attacks.