Improving Resilience and Security of RPKI Validation through a Byzantine-Secure Relying Party

Temel Kavramlar

A Byzantine-secure relying party implementation, called BRP, that uses consensus among multiple relying party instances to provide a resilient and secure RPKI validation service.

Özet

The paper proposes BRP, a Byzantine-secure relying party (RP) implementation for the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI) system. RPKI is a crucial mechanism for securing the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) by binding IP address blocks to their legitimate owners. However, the current RPKI deployment faces several challenges, including failures and vulnerabilities in the RP software, which can disable RPKI validation and expose the network to BGP prefix hijacks.

To address these issues, the authors develop BRP, which uses a centralized setup with multiple RP instances that run a Byzantine agreement protocol to reach consensus on RPKI objects. BRP achieves good synchronization even against strong adversaries that can attack, corrupt or control some of the RPs. The key aspects of BRP's design include:

1. Synchronizing the VRP (Validated ROA Payload) output layer instead of the RPKI object cache, to avoid introducing new errors by breaking dependencies.
2. Using a threshold vote to aggregate the skiplist (of problematic publication points) and VRPs across the RP instances, ensuring consistency and resilience against benign failures and Byzantine behavior.
3. Monitoring the RP instances to detect and blacklist publication points that trigger crashes or stalling attacks, ensuring availability of the VRP output.
4. Providing an intermediate RPKI validation service that is fully backward compatible and can be deployed as a decentralized network of volunteer RPs or as a centralized service, without requiring any changes to the existing RPKI infrastructure or border routers.

The authors analyze the security of BRP and demonstrate through simulations and experimental evaluations that it outperforms existing RP implementations in terms of resilience, security and performance. BRP can protect many networks transparently, facilitating wider adoption of RPKI and Route Origin Validation (ROV).

İstatistikler

The paper reports the following key statistics:

Almost 50% of all Internet prefixes are covered with ROAs (Route Origin Authorizations), but only 12.3% to 30% of networks enforce ROV (Route Origin Validation).
4.6% to 12.5% of RPKI repositories exhibit chronic availability issues.
Over 5.6K unique RPs are competing for access to the RPKI repositories.

Alıntılar

"RPKI was standardized more than a decade ago, in 2011, but despite its significance, RPKI's deployment is discouragingly slow."
"Even the fairly few adopters are not necessarily secure. A security mechanism, whose protection can be removed, e.g., by creating a load on the RPKI repositories - a completely realistic and practical attack - creates a false sense of security, leading, in fact, to a less secure Internet."
"As the adoption of RPKI proceeds, any inconsistency, vulnerability, or misconfiguration in RPKI will have a greater impact on the Internet stability, since increasingly more networks may be affected."

Önemli Bilgiler Şuradan Elde Edildi

Byzantine-Secure Relying Party for Resilient RPKI

by Jens Friess,... : arxiv.org 05-02-2024

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.00531.pdf

Daha Derin Sorular

How can the design of BRP be extended to provide stronger security guarantees, such as verifiability of the consensus process or protection against Sybil attacks?

In order to enhance the security guarantees of BRP, several extensions can be implemented. Firstly, to ensure verifiability of the consensus process, a transparent and auditable logging mechanism can be integrated into the system. This would allow for the recording of all decisions made during the consensus process, enabling independent verification by external parties. By logging each step of the consensus algorithm and the inputs from each node, the integrity of the process can be upheld, and any discrepancies or malicious behavior can be easily identified.
To protect against Sybil attacks, where a single entity creates multiple fake identities to manipulate the system, additional measures can be put in place. One approach is to implement a reputation system where nodes build trust over time based on their behavior and contributions to the network. Nodes with higher reputation would have more influence in the consensus process, reducing the impact of malicious actors attempting to control the system through multiple identities. Furthermore, introducing cryptographic mechanisms such as digital signatures and encryption can enhance the security of the communication between nodes, making it harder for malicious entities to interfere with the consensus process.
By incorporating these extensions, the design of BRP can provide stronger security guarantees, ensuring the verifiability of the consensus process and protecting against Sybil attacks, thus enhancing the overall resilience and security of the system.

How can the design of BRP be extended to provide stronger security guarantees, such as verifiability of the consensus process or protection against Sybil attacks?

To enhance the security guarantees of BRP, the design can be extended in several ways. One approach is to introduce a verifiability layer that allows external parties to audit the consensus process. This can be achieved by implementing a transparent logging mechanism that records all decisions made during the consensus algorithm. By enabling independent verification of the consensus process, the system can ensure the integrity of the decisions made by the nodes.
To protect against Sybil attacks, where a single entity creates multiple fake identities to manipulate the system, additional security measures can be implemented. One strategy is to introduce a reputation system that assigns trust levels to nodes based on their behavior and contributions to the network. Nodes with higher trust levels would have more influence in the consensus process, reducing the impact of malicious actors attempting to control the system through multiple identities.
Furthermore, cryptographic techniques such as digital signatures and encryption can be utilized to secure the communication between nodes and prevent unauthorized access or tampering with the consensus process. By incorporating these security measures, the design of BRP can provide stronger security guarantees, ensuring the verifiability of the consensus process and protecting against Sybil attacks.

What are the potential drawbacks or limitations of a centralized deployment of BRP compared to a decentralized network of volunteer RPs?

While a centralized deployment of BRP offers certain advantages, such as easier management and coordination, there are also potential drawbacks and limitations to consider compared to a decentralized network of volunteer RPs.
One major drawback of a centralized deployment is the single point of failure. If the central server hosting BRP experiences downtime or is compromised, the entire network could be disrupted, leading to a significant impact on the reliability and availability of the system. In contrast, a decentralized network of volunteer RPs distributes the workload and responsibilities across multiple nodes, reducing the risk of a single point of failure and enhancing the system's resilience.
Another limitation of a centralized deployment is the potential for increased vulnerability to targeted attacks. A centralized system presents a lucrative target for malicious actors seeking to disrupt or manipulate the consensus process. In a decentralized network, the distribution of nodes makes it more challenging for attackers to compromise the entire system.
Additionally, a centralized deployment may raise concerns about data privacy and security. Centralizing sensitive information in one location increases the risk of unauthorized access or data breaches. In a decentralized network, data is distributed across multiple nodes, reducing the impact of a security breach on the entire system.
Overall, while a centralized deployment of BRP offers certain conveniences, such as streamlined management and coordination, it also comes with drawbacks in terms of reliability, security, and resilience compared to a decentralized network of volunteer RPs.

What are the potential drawbacks or limitations of a centralized deployment of BRP compared to a decentralized network of volunteer RPs?

Centralized deployment of BRP may introduce certain drawbacks and limitations compared to a decentralized network of volunteer RPs.
One significant limitation of a centralized deployment is the single point of failure. If the central server hosting BRP experiences downtime or is compromised, the entire system could be at risk of disruption. In contrast, a decentralized network of volunteer RPs distributes the workload and responsibilities across multiple nodes, reducing the impact of any individual node failure on the overall system.
Another drawback of a centralized deployment is the potential for increased vulnerability to targeted attacks. A centralized system presents a lucrative target for malicious actors, as compromising the central server could have widespread consequences. In a decentralized network, the distribution of nodes makes it more challenging for attackers to disrupt the entire system.
Furthermore, a centralized deployment may raise concerns about data privacy and security. Centralizing sensitive information in one location increases the risk of unauthorized access or data breaches. In a decentralized network, data is distributed across multiple nodes, reducing the impact of a security breach on the entire system.
Overall, while a centralized deployment of BRP may offer certain conveniences in terms of management and coordination, it also comes with drawbacks in terms of reliability, security, and resilience compared to a decentralized network of volunteer RPs.