Assessment of Vulnerability of Content Adaptation Mechanisms to RoQ Attacks

Abstract

Abstract-Current computing systems employ different mechanisms to deal with overload conditions. Of those widely deployed are content adaptation mechanisms whereby the quality level of the content is adapted dynamically to mitigate overload conditions. Serving degraded content reduces strain on resources and enables them to cater for a larger set of clients. To that end, this paper studies adversarial exploits of dynamic content adaptation mechanisms to a new instantiation of Reduction of Quality (RoQ) attacks. The RoQ attack pattern is orchestrated to cause different forms of damage such as longer response time for legitimate clients, degraded content being served and underutilization of resources. We assess the impact of RoQ attacks via the potency metric which reflects the tradeoffs between the damage inflicted and the cost in mounting the attack. We validate our results through numerical analysis as well as real Internet experiments.

Timed CP-Nets Based RoQ Attack Modeling and System Defense Analysis

“…Although this is very representative, detecting and defending methods against it still have some limitations. RoQ attacks also exist in many other adaptation mechanism deployed systems, such as content adaptation or admission control targeted RoQ attacks [2], [3]. These attacks severely damage the service QoS to normal clients supplied by the victim system, through misguiding the decision process of the system's adaptation control mechanism.…”

“…The attack principle and defending methods has been studied in many papers [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. As one of the earliest kind of attack be put forward, TCP congestion control mechanism targeted RoQ attack which be called shrew attack [1] has been discussed most frequently.…”