Do Not Complicate Routing Security with Voodoo Economics

Mon Sep 5 14:53:38 UTC 2011

On Sep 5, 2011, at 7:24 AM, Jennifer Rexford wrote:

> 
>> 
>> One could argue that rejecting routes which you previously had no way to
>> know you should reject will inherently alter the routing system and that this
>> is probably a good thing.
> 
> Good point.  Also, "tie breaking" in favor of signed-and-verified routes over not-signed-and-verified routes does not necessarily affect your traffic "positively or negatively" -- rather, if you are letting an arbitrary final tie break make the decision anyway, you are arguably *neutral* about the outcome...
> 
> -- Jen

This is true in terms of whether you care or not, but, if one just looks at whether it changes the content of the FIB or not, changing which arbitrary tie breaker you use likely changes the contents of the FIB in at least some cases.

The key point is that if you are to secure a previously unsecured database such as the routing table, you will inherently be changing the contents of said database, or, your security isn't actually accomplishing anything.

Owen