Distributed OS: Winter 2011

Readings

January 13, 2011: CCR (two papers)

January 18, 2011: OceanStore and Pond

Internet Governance

Problems to Solve

• Attack computers with almost no consequences
  • DDoS
  • botnets
  • capture and analyze private traffic
  • distribute malware
  • tampering with traffic
  • Unauthorized access to data and resources
  • Impersonate computers, individuals, applications
  • Fraud, theft
  • regulate behavior

Design Principles

• subjects of governance: programs and computers
• bind programs and computers to humans & human organizations, but recognize binding is imperfect
• recognize that "bad" behavior is always possible. "good" behavior is enforced through incentives and sanctions.
• rules will change. Even rules for rule changes will change. Need a "living document" governing how rules are chosen and enforced.

Scenarios

1: Stopping DDoS

Group members: Seyyed, Andrew Schoenrock, Thomas McMahon

• Have the machine routing packets(could be ISP provider) detect suspicious packets, if the packets are signed, then those suspicious packets could be blocked,

the sender could be put on a black list.

• Stopping DDoS against files, services, programs, etc
  • Have file replication built into the system (similar to OceanStore) so that files are always available from different servers
  • If files are not replicated then we could have a tiered messaging system (at the top level would be OS messages) and servers could then prioritize the incoming traffic. If a given server is experiencing an overload, it could send out a distress signal to its neighbours and then distribute what it is has to them. The system should have a built-in mechanism to re-balance the overall load after something like this happens. This would then mean that any DDoS attack would result in the service being more available.

• Stopping DDoS against specific machines
  • I don't think that this should be specifically addressed. I think measures introduced to guard against this will ultimately negatively impact the overall system in terms of performance.

2: Stopping phishing

Group members: Waheed Ahmed, Nicolas Lessard, Raghad Al-Awwad

• A way of automatically checking the signature of a message to make sure it really is from a trusted source.
  • ie: "Nation of Banks, did your member TD send me a message to reset my password?"

3: Limiting the spread of malware

Group members: keith, Andrew, David Barrera

4: Bandwidth hogs

Group members: Mike Preston, Fahim Rahman, Michael Du Plessis

• limit bandwidth for each user
• if user has significant bandwidth demands for a certain period of time
  • add them to a watch list
  • monitor their behaviour