Securing the calea architecture against denial of service attacks

Project Abstract

<p> </p><p>Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) around the world utilizes eavesdropping systems that are based on</p><p>the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) architecture, which provides a</p><p>platform for transmitting and collecting these data for further analysis. Recent security analysis however</p><p>has revealed that CALEA is susceptible to Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, which could potentially</p><p>compromise the ability of the system to transmit, analyse and utilize the captured data in real time. The</p><p>primary reason for this is the limited transfer rate allocated for sending data obtained via eavesdropping.</p><p>The bandwidth can be easily overwhelmed by dummy messages if the transmission link is hijacked,</p><p>resulting in subsequent loss of real data being transmitted. This would be analogous to the SYN flood</p><p>attack observed in web servers.</p><p>This project proposes a solution to this issue, which involves splitting the original data to be transmitted</p><p>into smaller chunks prior to transmission. The motivation is to decrease the probability of packets</p><p>containing real data being lost when the bandwidth usage increases when a DOS attack is attempted.</p><p>Subsequently larger amount of real data arrives intact at the receiving end, which can then be gainfully</p><p>utilized. The process of distinguishing the fake from real messages could be achieved through some </p><p>appropriate pattern recognition and classification software, which however would be beyond the scope</p><p>of this project. The key activities in this project involve the design, implementation and test of the</p><p>performance aspects of the proposed solution to the DOS attack problem.</p><p>A brief overview of the CALEA architecture is provided, along with the various key modules that</p><p>comprise it. The current solution is proposed after an analysis of various alternatives. The primary</p><p>research methodology in this project concerns the design of the experimental tests for the proposed</p><p>solution, its implementation, execution, data gathering and subsequent analysis. The trial runs are</p><p>repeated for both wireless medium and wired medium in order to compare results. A limited transfer rate</p><p>link is used to simulate an overwhelmed link and the FTP protocol is used for the file transfer process. A</p><p>performance analysis is shown to indicate the amount of real data that would have been lost without the</p><p>use of the solution. A discussion about the strength and weakness of the solution is also provided, along</p><p>with avenues for future work. </p> <br><p></p>

Project Overview