Strategies for Addressing Link State Routing Protocol Vulnerabilities: A Panoramic View

The link state routing protocol is the most widely used intra-domain routing protocol, which is used to distribute and maintain routing information among various routers within a domain. Unfortunately, this protocol is vulnerable to several security attacks. These attacks may be as simple as packet sniffing or as sophisticated as the insider attack. Research has been done to enhance the security of the protocol, but either falls short of providing substantial security or suffers from practical implementation issues. In spite of all these efforts, the research world lacks a comprehensive threat model specific to the link state routing protocol. This article attempts to fill this gap by studying a large number of different kinds of attacks that might occur during the normal execution of the protocols and presents a comprehensive attack model that is aimed at guiding researchers working in the area of securing the link state routing protocol. The article then discusses the existing solutions that address some of the threats and suggests security mechanism for threats that have not yet been addressed. Finally, the need of a new routing framework is underlined that can address the common threats as well as the threats that were not considered in the past.