Segment Level Authentication: Combating internet source spoofing

Abstract

This paper presents SLA (Segment Level Authentication), a transport segment level solution designed to prevent both of the intra-domain and inter-domain source spoofing. SLA is based on public key cryptography authentication. It enables intermediate network nodes the ability to validate the packet authenticity by verifying authentication information carried in packets. Although public key cryptography is computationally intensive and induces the traffic overhead, SLA leverages FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) based ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) hardware cryptography accelerator to decrease the computation and traffic overhead. SLA provides incremental deployment and offers incentives for both of hosts and ASes. We find that the SLA is feasible for Gigabit links and can effectively mitigate source spoofing in both of intra-domain and inter-domain networks.