The new threat to internet: DNP attack with the attacking flows strategizing technology

Summary Distributed network paralyzing (DNP) attack, a kind of distributed denial‐of‐service attack that utilize botnet to congest and paralyze autonomous system level network, is a serious threat to network security. In this article, it is indicated that the most difficulty of DNP attack is strategizing DNP attacking flows automatically from the perspective of the attacker. For this outstanding issue, we introduce the DNP attacking flows strategizing technology, which can help an attacker to launch DNP attack efficiently through a series of attacking resources division–target links and attacking paths orientation–flux planning process. Through simulation, we demonstrate that the feasibility of attacking flows strategizing technology and prove that an attacker who controls a large‐scale botnet can utilize DNP attack to seriously threat the network security. At last, from the perspective of the defender, it is indicated that the network security researcher should strengthen the relevant research to defend the DNP attack. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In distributed network paralyzing attack, for instance Coordinated Cross Plane Session Termination, a set of target links should be attacked simultaneously. In this case, how to strategize attacking flows is very important. For example, A and B are target links; link 1 is not a target, but if link 1 is congested, attacking flows from segment 2 cannot reach A and B, the attack may fail. If there are more target, strategizing will be more difficult; distributed network paralyzing attacking flows strategizing technology will solve this problem.