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Events for the 5th week of September
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PhD Defense - Lan Wei
Mon, Sep 28, 2020 @ 01:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Title: Anycast Stability, Security and Latency in the DNS and CDNs
PhD Candidate: Lan Wei
committee:
John Heidemann (chair, advisor)
Ramesh Govindan
Konstantinos Psounis (USC EE department)
Ricardo de Oliveira Schmidt (University of Passo Fundo)
Date: September 28, 2020
Time: 1:30-3:30pm
Zoom: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91845858491
Abstract:
Clients' performance is important for both Content-Delivery Networks (CDNs) and the Domain Name System (DNS). Operators would like the service to meet expectations of their users. CDNs providing stable connections will prevent users from experiencing downloading pause from connection breaks. Users expect DNS traffic to be secure without being intercepted or injected. Both CDN and DNS operators care about a short network latency, since users can become frustrated by slow replies.
Many CDNs and DNS services (such as the DNS root) use IP anycast to bring content closer to users. Anycast-based services announce the same IP address(es) from globally distributed sites. In an anycast infrastructure, Internet routing protocols will direct users to a nearby site naturally. The path between a user and an anycast site is formed on a hop-to-hop basis---at each hop (a network device such as a router), routing protocols like Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) makes the decision about which next hop to go to. ISPs at each hop will impose their routing policies to influence BGP's decisions. Without globally knowing (also unable to modify) the distributed information of BGP routing table of every ISP on the path, anycast infrastructure operators are unable to predict and control in real-time which specific site a user will visit and what the routing path will look like. Also, any change in routing policy along the path may change both the path and the site visited by a user. We refer to such minimal control over routing towards an anycast service, the uncertainty of anycast routing. Using anycast spares extra traffic management to map users to sites, but can operators provide a good anycast-based service without precise control over the routing?
This routing uncertainty raises three concerns: routing can change, breaking connections; uncertainty about global routing means spoofing can go undetected, and lack of knowledge of global routing can lead to suboptimal latency. In this thesis, we show how we confirm the stability, how we confirm the security, and how we improve the latency of anycast to answer these three concerns. First, routing changes can cause users to switch sites, and therefore break a stateful connection such as a TCP connection immediately. We study routing stability and demonstrate that connections in anycast infrastructure are rarely broken by routing instability. Of all vantage points (VPs), fewer than 0.15% VP's TCP connections frequently break due to timeout in 5s during all 17 hours we observed. We only observe such frequent TCP connection break in 1 service out of all 12 anycast services studied. A second problem is DNS spoofing, where a third-party can intercept the DNS query and return a false answer. We examine DNS spoofing to study two aspects of security---integrity and privacy, and we design an algorithm to detect spoofing and distinguish different mechanisms to spoof anycast-based DNS. We show that DNS spoofing is uncommon, happening to only 1.7% of all VPs, although increasing over the years.Among all three ways to spoof DNS---injections, proxies, and third-party anycast site (prefix hijack), we show that third-party anycast site is the least popular one. Last, diagnosing poor latency and improving the latency can be difficult for CDNs. We develop a new approach, BAUP (bidirectional anycast unicast probing), which detects inefficient routing with better routing replacement provided. We use BAUP to study anycast latency. By applying BAUP and changing peering policies, a commercial CDN is able to significantly reduce latency, cutting median latency in half from 40ms to 16ms for regional users.
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91845858491
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Lizsl De Leon
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Cybersecurity Professional Career Panel
Thu, Oct 01, 2020 @ 05:00 PM - 06:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Workshops & Infosessions
The USC Global Policy Institute invites CS@USC students to attend a virtual professional panel on careers in cyber security! Our Cyber Professional Career Panel will give students an opportunity to hear from young professionals and USC alumni actively working in cyber-related fields and industries. Alumni will also discuss how they utilized their IR and Political Science degrees in cyber careers!
Join us this Thursday, October 1st from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. PST for this Zoom webinar and Q&A.
RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cybersecurity-professional-career-panel-tickets-122913320049
The Zoom registration can be found here and in your Eventbrite confirmation email: https://usc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEof-6opj4sH9eHeMUHjk-IkZcwkrEVWzqV
PANELISTS
GPI is joined by Zachery Smith, a Systemic Risk Manager at the FSARC. He works alongside U.S. financial institutions (Bank of America, The Bank of New York Mellon, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, State Street, Wells Fargo) and the U.S. government to identify and mitigate cyber and operational risk for national critical infrastructure. Zach previously spent three years in cybersecurity management consulting for energy sector critical infrastructure. He contributed to initiatives focused on operational resilience including enterprise-wide security redesigns at multiple Fortune 500 energy clients. Zach is an Aspen Institute Socrates Scholar, Institute for Education Government Fellow, Harman Academy Fellow, and USC Global Fellow. He is based in Washington D.C.
Our second panelist is Swini Tummala. Swini is a senior underwriter on the cyber and professional liability team at AIG. As an underwriter she works with brokers to find insurance solutions to risks including, but not limited to, data breaches and errors in the provision of professional services for client companies. Swini graduated from USC with B.A.s in International Relations and Economics and is currently enrolled in the University of Notre Dame's Master of Science Finance program. She hopes to eventually combine her interest in economic development with her insurance career through microinsurance.
Our third panelist is Michael Hwang. Michael is a penetration tester for a prestigious research university on the West Coast. He is certified as an OSCP and holds the GXPN certification
Location: Online - Zoom
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEof-6opj4sH9eHeMUHjk-IkZcwkrEVWzqV
Audiences: Undergraduate and Graduate Students
Contact: USC Global Policy Institute
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USC MEGA Student Speaker Series
Fri, Oct 02, 2020 @ 05:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Student Activity
Looking to level up your Unity programming skills? Join us this Friday, October 2 at 5:00 PM PST for a discussion by Gabriel Lacayo on how you can utilize lesser-known aspects of programming in Unity to facilitate faster iteration and create better programming structures! Gabriel will be covering topics like how to use ScriptableObjects, Attributes, Property Drawers, Editor Scripts, and more.
While anyone is welcome to join, this talk is primarily for those who already have some programming experience and would like to take their skills even further.
Gabriel Lacayo is a junior at USC majoring in Computer Science (Games). Gabriel has worked on several projects in Unity, with the most recent being 2D platformer game Embower. Have any questions for Gabriel? Stick around after the presentation for a quick Q&A session!
Check out Embower on Itch.io: https://atsinacorrington.itch.io/embower
Zoom link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95063590083?pwd=OThyZHQwZW4zRkFSVGVqWTVmSUtOUT09
Meeting ID: 950 6359 0083
Passcode: 100220 **
**The passcode will always be the date of the event!
For any questions, please email megamesusc@gmail.com or reach out to us via our socials:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/USCMEGA
Discord: https://discord.gg/4rDUD6H
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MEGA_USC
Website: www.uscmega.org
Best,
MEGA
Location: Online - Zoom
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/95063590083?pwd=OThyZHQwZW4zRkFSVGVqWTVmSUtOUT09
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: USC MEGA
