International Association for Cryptologic Research

International Association
for Cryptologic Research

CryptoDB

Analysis of the SPV Secure Routing Protocol: Weaknesses and Lessons

Authors:
Barath Raghavan
Saurabh Panjwani
Anton Mityagin
Download:
URL: http://eprint.iacr.org/2006/087
Search ePrint
Search Google
Abstract: We analyze a secure routing protocol, Secure Path Vector (SPV), proposed in SIGCOMM 2004. SPV aims to provide authenticity for route announcements in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) using an efficient alternative to ordinary digital signatures, called constant-time signatures. Today, SPV is often considered the best cryptographic defense for BGP. We find subtle flaws in the design of SPV which lead to attacks that can be mounted by 60% of Autonomous Systems in the Internet. In addition, we study several of SPV's design decisions and assumptions and highlight the requirements for security of routing protocols. In light of our analysis, we reexamine the need for constant-time signatures and find that certain standard digital signature schemes can provide the same level of efficiency for route authenticity.
BibTeX
@misc{eprint-2006-21580,
  title={Analysis of the SPV Secure Routing Protocol: Weaknesses and Lessons},
  booktitle={IACR Eprint archive},
  keywords={routing, signatures, BGP},
  url={http://eprint.iacr.org/2006/087},
  note={ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review, April 2007 barath@cs.ucsd.edu 13629 received 6 Mar 2006, last revised 26 Apr 2007},
  author={Barath Raghavan and Saurabh Panjwani and Anton Mityagin},
  year=2006
}