A Simulation Model for the Analysis of DDoS Amplification Attacks

The ever increasing growth of Internet has achieved global connections among millions of networks and devices which exchange information through computer systems in companies, organizations and governments. At the same time, hackers have developed skills that imply critical issues related to network and information security. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) is one of the most sophisticated and effective attack techniques. In view of this, it is fundamental that DDoS prevention/defense algorithms could be evaluated through suit- able discrete-event simulation models in order to assess their effectiveness before they get deployed in production systems. This paper proposes a simulation model for the analysis of a specific type of DDoS, i.e. DDoS amplification, that can exploit NTP or DNS protocols. The developed model, which has been implemented within NeSSi2, allowed to compare the effects of the attack under the two scenarios.