A Blockchain-Based Architecture for Collaborative DDoS Mitigation with Smart Contracts

Abstract

Abstract. The rapid growth in the number of insecure portable and stationary devices and the exponential increase of traffic volume makes Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks a top security threat to services provisioning. Existing defense mechanisms lack resources and flexibility to cope with attacks by themselves, and by utilizing other's companies resources, the burden of the mitigation can be shared. Emerging technologies such as blockchain and smart contracts allows for the sharing of attack information in a fully distributed and automated fashion. In this paper, the design of a novel architecture is proposed by combining these technologies introducing new opportunities for flexible and efficient DDoS mitigation solutions across multiple domains. Main advantages are the deployment of an already existing public and distributed infrastructure to advertise white or blacklisted IP addresses, and the usage of such infrastructure as an additional security mechanism to existing DDoS defense systems, without the need to build specialized registries or other distribution mechanisms, which enables the enforcement of rules across multiple domains.

An overview on smart contracts: Challenges, advances and platforms

“…Attackers flood the targeted machine with superfluous requests to overload systems, consequently interrupting or suspending Internet services [102]. Recently, a collaborative mechanism was proposed to mitigate DDoS attacks [103]. Compared with traditional solutions, this scheme that is based on smart contracts can tackle the attacks in a fully decentralized manner.…”

Blockchain‐based security aspects in heterogeneous Internet‐of‐Things networks: A survey

“…These edge nodes store the policies and credential for registering the local entities in its database. As these are local entities, low latency and minimum bandwidth are required. Rodrigues et al proposed a BC‐based architecture for collaborative DDoS mitigation with the help of smart contracts on Ethereum . The architecture consists of three components: Customers , who report to the Ethereum BC via smart contracts about the whitelisted or blacklisted IP addresses; the autonomous systems publish the reported whitelisted or blacklisted IP addresses.…”

Collaborative Blockchain-Based Detection of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks Based on Internet of Things Botnets

“…Specifically, the prevention of DDoS attacks through the use of blockchain has been one of the most interesting approaches discussed [24]. Moreover, a collaborative architecture based on the use of blockchain and smart contracts, that enables DDoS mitigation across multiple domains has also been proposed [26]. It mainly uses white and black lists of IPs as a security mechanism against DDoS attacks.…”