ContagAlert: Using Contagion Theory for Adaptive, Distributed Alert Propagation

Treaster, Michael; Conner, William G.; Gupta, Indranil; Nahrstedt, Klara

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/11071 Copy

Description

Title

ContagAlert: Using Contagion Theory for Adaptive, Distributed Alert Propagation

Author(s)

• Treaster, Michael
• Conner, William G.
• Gupta, Indranil
• Nahrstedt, Klara

Issue Date

2005-07

Keyword(s)

distributed systems

Abstract

"The widespread uses of large-scale distributed systems, e.g., Grid networks and distributed storage systems, raise the possibilities of large-scale attacks on such systems. Although current technology for detecting worms and viruses in the Internet can be applied, few existing systems support fast propagation of alerts during the attack itself. This paper proposes and studies a new system towards this problem. The system, called ""ContagAlert"", uses contagion spreading behavior, somewhat like the spread of fads in society, in order to spread alerts. ContagAlert is able to propagate an alert while the attack is in progress, while at the same time suppressing disruptive signals generated by adversaries or false positives. The core contagion protocols in the system are completely localized, involving simple threshold checks at each node, but resulting in desired emergent threshold behavior at the network scale. Signals with too few sources fail to spread, and signals exceeding the threshold propagate across the entire network. Contagion protocols can be analyzed using bootstrap percolation models. We also present experimental results from contagion protocols running in a wide variety of topologies. Finally, we present experiments based on two real-life applications: Internet worm attacks and DoS attacks on p2p systems."

Type of Resource

text

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/11071

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