SaTC: CORE: Large: Collaborative: Investigating the Susceptibility of the Internet Topology to Country-level Connectivity Disruption and Manipulation

黑客、恐怖分子或民族国家等恶意行为者可以针对互联网的结构性弱点，破坏、拦截或操纵整个国家或地区的互联网流量。Internet拓扑中存在战略物理位置。尽管最近对网络攻击媒介和机制有了很大的兴趣和大量的研究，但我们缺乏严谨的工具来解释一个国家或地区的互联网拓扑结构如何暴露其关键通信基础设施，使其受到有针对性的攻击。本项目开发方法来识别互联网基础设施的潜在拓扑弱点，特别是从攻击者的角度，并量化攻击者破坏这些关键元素的潜在影响。本项目的广泛影响是巨大的：了解国家或地区互联网拓扑结构的结构性弱点不仅对研究和业务社区有重大意义，而且对日常互联网用户和政策机构也有重大意义。更广泛地说，它将确保我们日常活动所依赖的关键互联网基础设施的安全。本项目分为两阶段。在第一阶段，目标是确定一个国家和地区的互联网拓扑结构的重要组成部分——自治系统、互联网交换点、托管设施和代表互联网关键位置的物理电缆系统。该项目将承担一个新的多层映射工作，开发测量和分析技术来发现这些组件和它们之间的关系。该项目的第二阶段利用多层地图并开发方法来识别代表潜在拓扑弱点的组件，即，妥协一些这样的组件将允许攻击者破坏，操纵或窃听该国的大部分互联网流量。系统的多层视图将能够在关于攻击者的能力和知识的各种假设下，从整体上以及在特定层上评估弱点。地理注释将能够考虑与通信基础设施关键组件的地理分布有关的风险。

Malicious actors such as hackers, terrorists or nation-states can disrupt, intercept or manipulate the Internet traffic of entire countries or regions by targeting structural weaknesses of the Internet. Strategic physical locations exist in the Internet topology. Despite much recent interest and a large body of research on cyber-attack vectors and mechanisms, we lack rigorous tools to reason about how the Internet topology of a country or region exposes its critical communication infrastructure to compromise through targeted attacks. This project develops methodologies to identify potential topological weaknesses of the Internet infrastructure, especially from the perspective of an attacker, and to quantify the potential impact if attackers were to compromise these critical elements. The broader impacts of this project are substantial: understanding structural weaknesses in the Internet topology of countries or regions is of significant interest not just to the research and operational communities, but also to everyday Internet users and policy bodies. More generally, it will secure the critical Internet infrastructure on which our daily activities depend.This project is a two-phase project. In the first phase, the goal is identifying important components of the Internet topology of a country and region --- Autonomous Systems, Internet Exchange Points, colocation facilities, and physical cable systems that represent key locations of the Internet. The project will undertake a novel multi-layer mapping effort, developing measurement and analysis techniques to discover these components and the relationships between them. The second phase of the project utilizes the multi-layer map and develops methods to identify components that represent potential topological weaknesses, i.e., compromising a few such components would allow an attacker to disrupt, manipulate, or eavesdrop on a large fraction of Internet traffic of that country. The multi-layer view of the system will enable an assessment of weaknesses holistically as well as at specific layers, under various assumptions about the capabilities and knowledge of attackers. Geographic annotations will enable a consideration of risks related to the geographic distribution of critical components of the communication infrastructure.