Design and Implementation of a Distributed Denial-of-Service Data Simulator

A Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack is a distributed flood of traffic to consume the bandwidth and server resources until it is flooded such that it can no longer provide the service. The hardest part about a DDoS attack is that it is not trivial to detect that an attack is occurring [1] [2], mainly because the attackers could pretend to be normal users until the server crashes. Therefore, to identify and mitigate an attack, a network operator should be able to recognize misbehavior by identifying network signs and attacks patterns fastly [3]. Most of the signs and patterns identified can be used as a base to detect and find solutions to mitigate the cyber attacks.

In this thesis, the student has to investigate the most common types of DDoS described in the literature [4] [5] and understand his main characteristics (e.g., network impacts and traffic patterns). After that, a simulator able to demonstrate the behavior and characteristics of DDoS attacks has to be designed and implemented. This includes the implementation of an interface where DDoS attacks are selected from a list and configured (e.g., number of attackers and frequency) to generate information (e.g., a log file) that demonstrates the behavior and main characteristics of the selected attack.

References:

[1] S. T. Zargar, J. Joshi and D. Tipper: A Survey of Defense Mechanisms Against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Flooding Attacks; in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 2046-2069, Fourth Quarter 2013.

[2] P. Kamboj, M. C. Trivedi, V. K. Yadav, and V. K. Singh: Detection techniques of DDoS attacks: A survey; 4th IEEE Uttar Pradesh Section International Conference on Electrical, Computer, and Electronics (UPCON), Mathura, India, 2017, pp. 675-679.

[3] A. Bhardwaj, G. V. B. Subrahmanyam, V. Avasthi, H. Sastry and S. Goundar: DDoS attacks, new DDoS taxonomy and mitigation solutions — A survey; International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Power and Embedded System (SCOPES), Paralakhemundi, India, 2016, pp. 793-798.

[4] K. N. Mallikarjunan, K. Muthupriya, and S. M. Shalinie: A survey of distributed denial of service attack; 10th International Conference on Intelligent Systems and Control (ISCO), Coimbatore, India, 2016, pp. 1-6.

[5] Mattijs Jonker, Alistair King, Johannes Krupp, Christian Rossow, Anna Sperotto, and Alberto Dainotti: Millions of targets under attack: a macroscopic characterization of the DoS ecosystem; Internet Measurement Conference (IMC '17), New York, USA, 2017, PP. 100-113.