CAPoW: Context-Aware AI-Assisted Proof of Work Based DDoS Defense

Trisha Chakraborty, Shaswata Mitra, Sudip Mittal

2023

Abstract

Critical servers can be secured against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks using proof of work (PoW) systems assisted by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that learns contextual network request patterns. In this work, we introduce CAPOW, a context-aware anti-DDoS framework that injects latency adaptively during communication by utilizing context-aware PoW puzzles. In CAPOW, a security professional can define relevant request context attributes which can be learned by the AI system. These contextual attributes can include information about the user request, such as IP address, time, flow-level information, etc., and are utilized to generate a contextual score for incoming requests that influence the hardness of a PoW puzzle. These puzzles need to be solved by a user before the server begins to process their request. Solving puzzles slows down the volume of incoming adversarial requests. Additionally, the framework compels the adversary to incur a cost per request, hence making it expensive for an adversary to prolong a DDoS attack. We include the theoretical foundations of the CAPOW framework along with a description of its implementation and evaluation.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Chakraborty T., Mitra S. and Mittal S. (2023). CAPoW: Context-Aware AI-Assisted Proof of Work Based DDoS Defense. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT; ISBN 978-989-758-666-8, SciTePress, pages 62-72. DOI: 10.5220/0012069000003555

in Bibtex Style

@conference{secrypt23,
author={Trisha Chakraborty and Shaswata Mitra and Sudip Mittal},
title={CAPoW: Context-Aware AI-Assisted Proof of Work Based DDoS Defense},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT},
year={2023},
pages={62-72},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012069000003555},
isbn={978-989-758-666-8},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Security and Cryptography - Volume 1: SECRYPT
TI - CAPoW: Context-Aware AI-Assisted Proof of Work Based DDoS Defense
SN - 978-989-758-666-8
AU - Chakraborty T.
AU - Mitra S.
AU - Mittal S.
PY - 2023
SP - 62
EP - 72
DO - 10.5220/0012069000003555
PB - SciTePress