Hamiltonian path as protection against DOS.

[alan]

On Tue, 15 Aug 2006, Bill Stewart wrote:

> Crypto is usually about economics and scalability.
>
> If you're doing this for DOS/DDOS prevention,
> you don't need the NP-completeness perfection you get from
> Hamiltonian paths or similar problems - SHA is fine,
> or any other hash that's quick to verify and
> hard to reverse.  Even MD5 is probably still ok...
> Calculating any of the hashes probably takes less time than
> handling the packets does.
>
> It's almost certainly better for you if they harass you by
> sending you bogus SHA pieces that you can process quickly
> than bogus DH pieces that take you a while,
> and if it's not too distributed an attack,
> you can also blacklist senders IP addresses.

But if the packets are forged, wouldn't that turn it into a different kind 
of DOS?

If I can get you to blacklist Alice by sending n forged attack packages, 
then my DOS succeeded, if my goal is to deny a connection between you and 
Alice.

-- 
"I want to live just long enough to see them cut off Darl's head and
  stick it on a pike as a reminder to the next ten generations that some
  things come at too high a price. I would look up into his beady eyes and
  wave, like this... (*wave*!). Can your associates arrange that for me,
  Mr. McBride?"
                       - Vir "Flounder" Kotto, Sr. VP, IBM Empire.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com