1. Client Puzzles A Cryptographic Defense Against Connection Depletion Attacks Ari Juels and John Brainard RSA Laboratories

2. The Problem

3. How to take down a restaurant Saboteur Restauranteur

4. Saboteur vs. Restauranteur Saboteur Restauranteur Table for four at 8 oclock. Name of Mr. Smith. O.K., Mr. Smith

5. Saboteur Restauranteur No More Tables!

6. An example: TCP SYN flooding TCP connection, please. O.K. Please send ack. TCP connection, please. O.K. Please send ack. Buffer

7. u TCP SYN flooding has been deployed in the real world –Panix, mid-Sept. 1996 (WSJ, NYT) –New York Times, late Sept. 1996 –Others Similar attacks may be mounted against e-mail, SSL, etc.

8. Some defenses against connection depletion

9. Throw away requests Buffer Server Problem: Legitimate clients must keep retrying Client Hello?

10. Request IP Tracing (or Syncookies) Buffer Server Can be evaded, particularly on, e.g., Ethernet Does not allow for proxies, anonymity Problems: Client Hi. My name is 10.100.16.126.

11. Digital signatures Buffer Server Requires carefully regulated PKI Does not allow for anonymity Problems: Client

12. Connection timeout Problem: Hard to achieve balance between security and latency demands Server Client

13. Our solution: client puzzles

14. Intuition Restauranteur Table for four at 8 oclock. Name of Mr. Smith. Please solve this puzzle. O.K., Mr. Smith O.K. ???

15. u A puzzle takes an hour to solve u There are 40 tables in restaurant u Reserve at most one day in advance Intuition A legitimate patron can easily reserve a table, but: Suppose:

16. Intuition ??? Would-be saboteur has too many puzzles to solve

17. The client puzzle protocol Buffer Server Client Service request R O.K.

18. What does a puzzle look like?

19. hash image Y Puzzle basis: partial hash inversion pre-image X 160 bits ? Pair (X, Y) is k-bit-hard puzzle partial-image X ? k bits

20. Puzzle construction Client Service request R Server Secret S

21. Puzzle construction Server computes: secret S time T request R hash pre-image X hash image Y Puzzle

22. Puzzle properties u Puzzles are stateless u Puzzles are easy to verify u Hardness of puzzles can be carefully controlled u Puzzles use standard cryptographic primitives

23. Where to use client puzzles?

24. Some pros Avoids many flaws in other solutions, e.g.: u Allows for anonymous connections u Does not require PKI u Does not require retries -- even under heavy attack

25. Practical application u Can use client-puzzles without special- purpose software –Key idea: Applet carries puzzle + puzzle- solving code u Where can we apply this? –SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) –Web-based password authentication

26. Conclusions

27. u Puzzle and protocol description u Rigorous mathematical treatment of security using puzzles -- probabilistic/guessing attack –Dont really need multiple sub-puzzles as paper suggests Too Contributions of paper u Introduces idea of client puzzles for on- the-fly resource access control

28. Puzzles not new (but client-puzzles are) u Puzzles have also been used for: –Controlling spam (DW94, BGJMM98) –Auditing server usage (FM97) –Time capsules (RSW96)

29. u How to define a puzzle? Search space vs. sequential workload u Can puzzle construction be improved? More to be done –Replace hash with, e.g., reduced-round cipher u Can puzzles be made to do useful work? –Yes. Jakobsson & Juels Bread Pudding

30. Questions?