DHS Looks to Secure BGP

The Science & Technology (S&T) Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently kicked off a Cyber Security program. (BAA07-09).

Pulled from Page 12 -

The President’s National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace underlines the problems with the existing Internet infrastructure. The Internet routing infrastructure, in particular, has serious vulnerabilities. The routing infrastructure relies on the BGP, the routing protocol that connects ISPs and subscriber networks to form the Internet. Several techniques to secure BGP have been suggested over the past decade, but none has won acceptance for completeness, scalability, or deployability.

DHS S&T has initiated the Secure Protocols for the Routing Infrastructure (SPRI) program to lead the effort to design, evaluate, and deploy an acceptable security solution for the routing infrastructure. The aim is to make Internet communications reliable in the event of a deliberate malicious cyber attack.

To ensure the security solution is achievable in terms of acceptance and deployment by the Internet infrastructure community, S&T organized a series of workshops, bringing together participants from the major ISPs, router vendors, large-scale end users, major Internet registries, research institutions, and government network operations personnel. The goal was to construct an approach and a roadmap for securing BGP in the Internet routing infrastructure. One of the agreed-upon outcomes from these workshops was that there is a lack of tools for network operations personnel to support the management of routing infrastructure. In response to this identified need, this TTA seeks the development of a BGP Routing Anomaly Alert Tool (BRAAT).

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The document covers other cyber security topics, including botnets and malware.

Just in time for the new Die Hard movie -

"When a criminal plot is in place to take down the entire computer and technological structure that supports the economy of the United States (and the world), it's up to a decidedly "old school" hero, police detective John McClane (Willis), to take down the conspiracy, aided by a young hacker (Long)"

I am sure the stuff happening in Estonia is helping to bring this to the forefront as well.