Finding Incentives to Secure Internet Routing

Despite a decade of research, the problem of securing the global Internet’s routing system is far from solved. Indeed, a key hurdle for the transition to secure routing is the fact that the Internet consists of thousands of autonomous systems (e.g. backbone providers like AT&T, content providers like Google, business networks like Bank of America), that will make deployment decisions according to their own local business objectives. Worse yet, the security benefits provided by secure routing protocols tend not to kick in until they have been adopted by a large number of autonomous systems. As a result, the conventional wisdom argues that global deployment of routing security protocols is infeasible.

This talk overviews a series of our results that challenge this conventional wisdom. We shall use both theoretical arguments and simulations to show how local incentives can be harnessed to secure
the majority of autonomous systems in the Internet. No background
will be assumed.