AVOID – Automatic Verification of Internet Data-Paths

Date: 12/03/2024

Vendor: Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA)

Technology/Topic: AVOID – Automatic Verification of Internet Data-Paths

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Welcome to the Technical Exchange Meeting (TEM)!

Department of Defense (DOD) use of worldwide commercial networks entails reliance on untrusted third-party communications infrastructure, which can potentially expose communications to an adversary. Increasingly complex obfuscation techniques have created an arms race against network intelligence techniques to detect the obfuscation. With each new obfuscation, DOD can never know if it fools the adversary, or if the adversary is simply lulling DOD into a false sense of security. The next great capability leap for operating through unknown networks will come from sophisticated analytics that provide situational awareness of threats, and an implementation that dynamically routes communications along benign (i.e., unobservable by the adversary) paths. This project proposes a system — Automated Verification of Internet Data-paths (AVOID) — that provides this unprecedented capability through two subcomponents (AVOID-Path and AVOID-Vendor) that tackle high risk attack vectors for commercial communications.

AVOID-Path combats the ability of our adversaries to apply sophisticated and complex network analytics to any DOD communications that traverse networks or territory they control. AVOID-Path will embed topologic and geographic awareness into a routing system and provide a mechanism for DOD’s communications to avoid adversary-controlled territory across the global Internet and provide safe paths to DOD-controlled networks. This capability will provide end-to-end adversary avoidance without requiring modification to existing applications or routers in DOD networks, or cooperation by any third-party network.

AVOID-Vendor targets the potential for adversaries to control commercial (4G or 5G) base stations anywhere in the world, allowing them to subvert DOD communications at the point of entry into the wireless network. AVOID-Vendor will recognize malicious and surveillance base stations and provide a mechanism for DOD devices to connect to specific benign base stations.

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