NWO allocates 1.2 million euros to cyber security research

The Board of the Exact and Natural Sciences domain of NWO has five applications in the Joint U.S. call. - The Netherlands Cyber Security Research Program approved. This call allows collaboration between researchers working in the Netherlands and the U.S. in the field of cyber security. The call is a collaboration between NWO, the Ministry of Justice & Security and the American Department for Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T).

Beetween them PAADDoS was chosed:

PAADDOS: Planning Anycast for Anti-DDoS

Prof. dr. A. Pras & Prof. dr. J Heidemann

In addition to new possibilities, the Internet of Things also brings a number of problems, particularly in the field of security.

Recent events have shown that IoT devices are relatively easy to lend to very large-scale Denial of Service attacks.

Previous research has shown that small-scale DDoS attacks can already have a major impact on critical internet infrastructure such as the Domain Name System (DNS), which is responsible for converting domain names into IP addresses.

In this study we are working on improving protection methods against these types of attacks using Anycast as a defense. Anycast is a method to allow multiple systems to present themselves as one, where the total capacity is ideally the sum of the capacity of the systems. However, due to the complexity of the Internet, it is not trivial to set up a system in such a way.

This research focuses on the development of tools to help administrators of critical services to design their systems in such a way that the resistance to attacks is as high as possible. In addition, these tools can be used to optimize the capacity of the network during and against a specific attack.

The result of this research can be applied, for example, to critical internet infrastructure such as the DNS. So that the Internet continues to work as we know it today.