A Security Analysis of MPLS Service Degradation Attacks Based on Restricted Adversary Models

Abstract

Whilst the security and integrity of exterior gateway protocols such as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and, to a lesser extent, interior gateway protocols, including the Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), have been investigated previously, more limited attention has been paid to the problem of availability and timeliness that is crucial for service levels needed in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services and electric power (smart grid) networks. The authors describe a method for modeling adversaries for the analysis of attacks on quality of service characteristics underpinning such real-time networks as well as a model of policies employed by MPLS routers based on simplified networks and give an analysis of attack vectors based on assumed adversaries derived from the introduced method.