A modeling and simulation methodology for analyzing ATM network vulnerabilities

The design of complex asynchronous distributed systems including ATM networks is in itself quite challenging and designers rarely expend either the time or energy to consider how unexpected changes in the operating environment may affect the reliability of the system, let alone take into consideration imaginative ways in which a clever perpetrator may maliciously cause the system to fail, often catastrophically. While the occurrence and impact of attacks launched against telephone networks, store-and-forward networks such as the Internet, and the power grid, are widely reported in the news media, a systematic analysis of these attacks in the scientific literature is lacking. This paper is the first to propose the use of modeling and asynchronous distributed simulation as a systematic methodology to uncover vulnerabilities in complex ATM networks. The approach is demonstrated in two steps. In step 1, a few complex attacks are identified, which while based on the principles of ATM networking, are representative of those that would be construed by intelligent enemy agents. An attack is viewed as a perturbation of an operationally correct ATM network and may be classified under two broad categories. The first attack type focuses on failing specific, standard functions in ATM networks while the second category of attacks refers to the prescription of a malicious intent or objective. Under step 2, the attacks are modeled utilizing a representative ATM network and analyzed through a simulation utilizing an asynchronous, distributed, and accurate ATM simulator, that executes on a network of Pentium workstations under Linux, configured as a loosely-coupled parallel processor. Thus, the environment underlying the evaluation of the vulnerabilities reflect reality, implying, in turn, realistic results. In addition to revealing the weaknesses, the findings of this methodology may serve as a guide to either redesigning the ATM network and eliminating the vulnerabilities or synthesizing a sentinel that conceptually surrounds and protects from network from attacks. While the methodology is generalizable to ATM-like MPLS network and future network designs, it is beyond the scope of this paper.