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IETF RFC 8903
Last modified on Thursday, May 27th, 2021
 Permanent link to RFC 8903
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) R. Dobbins
Request for Comments: 8903 Netscout, Inc.
Category: Informational D. Migault
ISSN: 2070-1721 Ericsson
R. Moskowitz
HTT Consulting
N. Teague
Iron Mountain Data Centers
L. Xia
Huawei
K. Nishizuka
NTT Communications
May 2021
Use Cases for DDoS Open Threat Signaling
 Abstract
The DDoS Open Threat Signaling (DOTS) effort is intended to provide
protocols to facilitate interoperability across disparate DDoS
Mitigation solutions. This document presents sample use cases that
describe the interactions expected between the DOTS components as
well as DOTS messaging exchanges. These use cases are meant to
identify the interacting DOTS components, how they collaborate, and
what the typical information to be exchanged is.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for informational purposes.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents
approved by the IESG are candidates for any level of Internet
Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8903.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Terminology and Acronyms
3. Use Cases
3.1. Upstream DDoS Mitigation by an Upstream Internet Transit
Provider
3.2. DDoS Mitigation by a Third-Party DDoS Mitigation Service
Provider
3.3. DDoS Orchestration
4. Security Considerations
5. IANA Considerations
6. Informative References
Acknowledgments
Authors' Addresses
1. Introduction
At the time of writing, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack
mitigation solutions are largely based upon siloed, proprietary
communications schemes with vendor lock-in as a side effect. This
can result in the configuration, provisioning, operation, and
activation of these solutions being a highly manual and often time-
consuming process. Additionally, coordinating multiple DDoS
Mitigation solutions simultaneously is fraught with both technical
and process-related hurdles. This greatly increases operational
complexity, which in turn can degrade the efficacy of mitigations
that are generally highly dependent on a timely reaction by the
system.
The DDoS Open Threat Signaling (DOTS) effort is intended to specify
protocols that facilitate interoperability between diverse DDoS
Mitigation solutions and ensure greater integration in terms of
attack detection, mitigation requests, and attack characterization
patterns.
As DDoS solutions are broadly heterogeneous among vendors, the
primary goal of DOTS is to provide high-level interaction amongst
differing DDoS solutions, such as detecting DDoS attacks, initiating/
terminating DDoS Mitigation assistance, or requesting the status of a
DDoS Mitigation.
This document provides sample use cases that provided input for the
requirements [RFC 8612] and design of the DOTS protocols
[RFC 8782][RFC 8783]. The use cases are not exhaustive, and future use
cases are expected to emerge as DOTS is adopted and evolves.
2. Terminology and Acronyms
This document makes use of the same terminology and definitions as
[RFC 8612]. In addition, it uses the terms defined below:
DDoS Mitigation System (DMS):
A system that performs DDoS Mitigation. The DDoS Mitigation
System may be composed of a cluster of hardware and/or software
resources but could also involve an orchestrator that may make
decisions, such as outsourcing some or all of the mitigation to
another DDoS Mitigation System.
DDoS Mitigation:
The action performed by the DDoS Mitigation System.
DDoS Mitigation Service:
Designates a service provided to a customer to mitigate DDoS
attacks. Each service subscription usually involve Service Level
Agreement (SLA) that has to be met. It is the responsibility of
the DDoS Service provider to instantiate the DDoS Mitigation
System to meet these SLAs.
DDoS Mitigation Service Provider:
Designates the administrative entity providing the DDoS Mitigation
Service.
Internet Transit Provider (ITP):
Designates the entity that delivers the traffic to a customer
network. It can be an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or an
upstream entity delivering the traffic to the ISP.
3. Use Cases
3.1. Upstream DDoS Mitigation by an Upstream Internet Transit Provider
This use case describes how an enterprise or a residential customer
network may take advantage of a pre-existing relation with its ITP in
order to mitigate a DDoS attack targeting its network.
For clarity of discussion, the targeted network is indicated as an
enterprise network, but the same scenario applies to any downstream
network, including residential and cloud hosting networks.
As the ITP provides connectivity to the enterprise network, it is
already on the path of the inbound and outbound traffic of the
enterprise network and is well aware of the networking parameters
associated with the enterprise network WAN connectivity. This eases
both the configuration and the instantiation of a DDoS Mitigation
Service.
This section considers two kinds of DDoS Mitigation Service between
an enterprise network and an ITP:
* The upstream ITP may instantiate a DMS upon receiving a request
from the enterprise network. This typically corresponds to a case
when the enterprise network is under attack.
* On the other hand, the ITP may identify an enterprise network as
the source of an attack and send a mitigation request to the
enterprise DMS to mitigate this at the source.
The two scenarios, though different, have similar interactions
between the DOTS client and server. For the sake of simplicity, only
the first scenario will be detailed in this section. Nevertheless,
the second scenario is also in scope for DOTS.
In the first scenario, as depicted in Figure 1, an enterprise network
with self-hosted Internet-facing properties such as web servers,
authoritative DNS servers, and Voice over IP (VoIP) servers has a DMS
deployed to protect those servers and applications from DDoS attacks.
In addition to on-premise DDoS defense capabilities, the enterprise
has contracted with its ITP for DDoS Mitigation Services when attacks
threaten to overwhelm the bandwidth of their WAN link(s).
+------------------+ +------------------+
| Enterprise | | Upstream |
| Network | | Internet Transit |
| | | Provider |
| +--------+ | | DDoS Attack
| | DDoS | | <=================================
| | Target | | <=================================
| +--------+ | | +------------+ |
| | +-------->| DDoS | |
| | | |S | Mitigation | |
| | | | | System | |
| | | | +------------+ |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| | | | |
| +------------+ | | | |
| | DDoS |<---+ | |
| | Mitigation |C | | |
| | System | | | |
| +------------+ | | |
+------------------+ +------------------+
* C is for DOTS client functionality
* S is for DOTS server functionality
Figure 1: Upstream Internet Transit Provider DDoS Mitigation
The enterprise DMS is configured such that if the incoming Internet
traffic volume exceeds 50% of the provisioned upstream Internet WAN
link capacity, the DMS will request DDoS Mitigation assistance from
the upstream transit provider. More sophisticated detection means
may be considered as well.
The requests to trigger, manage, and finalize a DDoS Mitigation
between the enterprise DMS and the ITP are made using DOTS. The
enterprise DMS implements a DOTS client while the ITP implements a
DOTS server, which is integrated with their DMS in this example.
When the enterprise DMS locally detects an inbound DDoS attack
targeting its resources (e.g., servers, hosts, or applications), it
immediately begins a DDoS Mitigation.
During the course of the attack, the inbound traffic volume to the
enterprise network exceeds the 50% threshold, and the enterprise DMS
escalates the DDoS Mitigation. The enterprise DMS DOTS client
signals to the DOTS server on the upstream ITP to initiate DDoS
Mitigation. The DOTS server replies to the DOTS client that it can
serve this request, and mitigation is initiated on the ITP network by
the ITP DMS.
Over the course of the attack, the DOTS server of the ITP
periodically informs the DOTS client on the mitigation status,
statistics related to DDoS attack traffic mitigation, and related
information. Once the DDoS attack has ended or decreased to a
certain level that the enterprise DMS might handle by itself, the
DOTS server signals the enterprise DMS DOTS client that the attack
has subsided.
The DOTS client on the enterprise DMS then requests that the ITP
terminate the DDoS Mitigation. The DOTS server on the ITP receives
this request and, once the mitigation has ended, confirms the end of
upstream DDoS Mitigation to the enterprise DMS DOTS client.
The following is an overview of the DOTS communication model for this
use case:
1. A DDoS attack is initiated against resources of a network
organization (here, the enterprise), which has deployed a DOTS-
capable DMS -- typically a DOTS client.
2. The enterprise DMS detects, classifies, and begins the DDoS
Mitigation.
3. The enterprise DMS determines that its capacity and/or capability
to mitigate the DDoS attack is insufficient and sends a DOTS DDoS
Mitigation request via its DOTS client to one or more DOTS
servers residing on the upstream ITP.
4. The DOTS server, which receives the DOTS Mitigation request,
determines that it has been configured to honor requests from the
requesting DOTS client and does so by orchestrating its own DMS.
5. While the DDoS Mitigation is active, the DOTS server regularly
transmits DOTS DDoS Mitigation status updates to the DOTS client.
6. Informed by the DOTS server status update that the attack has
ended or subsided, the DOTS client transmits a DOTS DDoS
Mitigation termination request to the DOTS server.
7. The DOTS server terminates DDoS Mitigation and sends the
notification to the DOTS client.
Note that communications between the enterprise DOTS client and the
upstream ITP DOTS server may take place in band within the main
Internet WAN link between the enterprise and the ITP; out of band via
a separate, dedicated wireline network link utilized solely for DOTS
signaling; or out of band via some other form of network connectivity
such as third-party wireless 4G network connectivity.
Note also that a DOTS client that sends a DOTS Mitigation request may
also be triggered by a network admin that manually confirms the
request to the upstream ITP, in which case the request may be sent
from an application such as a web browser or a dedicated mobile
application.
Note also that when the enterprise is multihomed and connected to
multiple upstream ITPs, each ITP is only able to provide a DDoS
Mitigation Service for the traffic it transits. As a result, the
enterprise network may be required to coordinate the various DDoS
Mitigation Services associated with each link. More multihoming
considerations are discussed in [DOTS-MULTIHOMING].
3.2. DDoS Mitigation by a Third-Party DDoS Mitigation Service Provider
This use case differs from the previous use case described in
Section 3.1 in that the DDoS Mitigation Service is not provided by an
upstream ITP. In other words, as represented in Figure 2, the
traffic is not forwarded through the DDoS Mitigation Service Provider
by default. In order to steer the traffic to the DDoS Mitigation
Service Provider, some network configuration changes are required.
As such, this use case is likely to apply to large enterprises or
large data centers but, as for the other use cases, is not
exclusively limited to them.
Another typical scenario for this use case is for there to be a
relationship between DDoS Mitigation Service Providers, forming an
overlay of DMS. When a DDoS Mitigation Service Provider mitigating a
DDoS attack reaches its resource capacity, it may choose to delegate
the DDoS Mitigation to another DDoS Mitigation Service Provider.
+------------------+ +------------------+
| Enterprise | | Upstream |
| Network | | Internet Transit |
| | | Provider |
| +--------+ | | DDoS Attack
| | DDoS | | <=================================
| | Target | | <=================================
| +--------+ | | |
| | | |
| | +------------------+
| |
| | +------------------+
| | | DDoS Mitigation |
| | | Service Provider |
| | | |
| +------------+ | | +------------+ |
| | DDoS |<------------>| DDoS | |
| | Mitigation |C | | S| Mitigation | |
| | System | | | | System | |
| +------------+ | | +------------+ |
+------------------+ +------------------+
* C is for DOTS client functionality
* S is for DOTS server functionality
Figure 2: DDoS Mitigation between an Enterprise Network and a
Third-Party DDoS Mitigation Service Provider
In this scenario, an enterprise network has entered into a
prearranged DDoS Mitigation assistance agreement with one or more
third-party DDoS Mitigation Service Providers in order to ensure that
sufficient DDoS Mitigation capacity and/or capabilities may be
activated in the event that a given DDoS attack threatens to
overwhelm the ability of the enterprise or any other given DMS to
mitigate the attack on its own.
The prearrangement typically includes agreement on the mechanisms
used to redirect the traffic to the DDoS Mitigation Service Provider,
as well as the mechanism to re-inject the traffic back to the
Enterprise Network. Redirection to the DDoS Mitigation Service
Provider typically involves BGP prefix announcement or DNS
redirection, while re-injection of the scrubbed traffic to the
enterprise network may be performed via tunneling mechanisms (e.g.,
GRE). The exact mechanisms used for traffic steering are out of
scope of DOTS but will need to be prearranged, while in some contexts
such changes could be detected and considered as an attack.
In some cases, the communication between the enterprise DOTS client
and the DOTS server of the DDoS Mitigation Service Provider may go
through the ITP carrying the DDoS attack, which would affect the
communication. On the other hand, the communication between the DOTS
client and DOTS server may take a path that is not undergoing a DDoS
attack.
+------------------+ +------------------+
| Enterprise | | Upstream |
| Network | | Internet Transit |
| | | Provider |
| +--------+ | | DDoS Attack
| | DDoS | |<----------------+ | ++====
| | Target | | Mitigated | | || ++=
| +--------+ | | | | || ||
| | | | | || ||
| | +--------|---------+ || ||
| | | || ||
| | +--------|---------+ || ||
| | | DDoS Mitigation | || ||
| | | Service Provider | || ||
| | | | | || ||
| +------------+ | | +------------+ | || ||
| | DDoS |<------------>| DDoS | | || ||
| | mitigation |C | |S | mitigation |<===++ ||
| | system | | | | system |<======++
| +------------+ | | +------------+ |
+------------------+ +------------------+
* C is for DOTS client functionality
* S is for DOTS server functionality
Figure 3: Redirection to a DDoS Mitigation Service Provider
When the enterprise network is under attack or at least is reaching
its capacity or ability to mitigate a given DDoS attack, the DOTS
client sends a DOTS request to the DDoS Mitigation Service Provider
to initiate network traffic diversion -- as represented in Figure 3
-- and DDoS Mitigation activities. Ongoing attack and mitigation
status messages may be passed between the enterprise network and the
DDoS Mitigation Service Provider using DOTS. If the DDoS attack has
stopped or the severity of the attack has subsided, the DOTS client
can request that the DDoS Mitigation Service Provider terminate the
DDoS Mitigation.
3.3. DDoS Orchestration
In this use case, one or more DDoS telemetry systems or monitoring
devices monitor a network -- typically an ISP network, an enterprise
network, or a data center. Upon detection of a DDoS attack, these
DDoS telemetry systems alert an orchestrator in charge of
coordinating the various DMSs within the domain. The DDoS telemetry
systems may be configured to provide required information, such as a
preliminary analysis of the observation, to the orchestrator.
The orchestrator analyzes the various sets of information it receives
from DDoS telemetry systems and initiates one or more DDoS Mitigation
strategies. For example, the orchestrator could select the DMS in
the enterprise network or one provided by the ITP.
DMS selection and DDoS Mitigation techniques may depend on the type
of the DDoS attack. In some cases, a manual confirmation or
selection may also be required to choose a proposed strategy to
initiate a DDoS Mitigation. The DDoS Mitigation may consist of
multiple steps such as configuring the network or updating already-
instantiated DDoS Mitigation functions. Eventually, the coordination
of the mitigation may involve external DDoS Mitigation resources such
as a transit provider or a third-party DDoS Mitigation Service
Provider.
The communication used to trigger a DDoS Mitigation between the DDoS
telemetry and monitoring systems and the orchestrator is performed
using DOTS. The DDoS telemetry system implements a DOTS client while
the orchestrator implements a DOTS server.
The communication between a network administrator and the
orchestrator is also performed using DOTS. The network administrator
uses, for example, a web interface that interacts with a DOTS client,
while the orchestrator implements a DOTS server.
The communication between the orchestrator and the DMSs is performed
using DOTS. The orchestrator implements a DOTS client while the DMSs
implement a DOTS server.
The configuration aspects of each DMS, as well as the instantiations
of DDoS Mitigation functions or network configuration, are not part
of DOTS. Similarly, the discovery of available DDoS Mitigation
functions is not part of DOTS and, as such, is out of scope.
+----------+
| network |C (Enterprise Network)
| admini- |<-+
| strator | |
+----------+ |
|
+----------+ | S+--------------+ +-----------+
|telemetry/| +->| |C S| DDoS |+
|monitoring|<--->| Orchestrator |<--->| mitigation||
|systems |C S| |<-+ | systems ||
+----------+ +--------------+C | +-----------+|
| +----------+
-----------------------------------|-----------------
|
|
(Internet Transit Provider) |
| +-----------+
| S| DDoS |+
+->| mitigation||
| systems ||
+-----------+|
* C is for DOTS client functionality +----------+
* S is for DOTS server functionality
Figure 4: DDoS Orchestration
The DDoS telemetry systems monitor various aspects of the network
traffic and perform some measurement tasks.
These systems are configured so that when an event or some
measurement indicators reach a predefined level, their associated
DOTS client sends a DOTS mitigation request to the orchestrator DOTS
server. The DOTS mitigation request may be associated with some
optional mitigation hints to let the orchestrator know what has
triggered the request. In particular, it is possible for something
that looks like an attack locally to one telemetry system is not
actually an attack when seen from the broader scope (e.g., of the
orchestrator).
Upon receipt of the DOTS mitigation request from the DDoS telemetry
system, the orchestrator DOTS server responds with an acknowledgment
to avoid retransmission of the request for mitigation. The
orchestrator may begin collecting additional fine-grained and
specific information from various DDoS telemetry systems in order to
correlate the measurements and provide an analysis of the event.
Eventually, the orchestrator may ask for additional information from
the DDoS telemetry system; however, the collection of this
information is out of scope of DOTS.
The orchestrator may be configured to start a DDoS Mitigation upon
approval from a network administrator. The analysis from the
orchestrator is reported to the network administrator via, for
example, a web interface. If the network administrator decides to
start the mitigation, the network administrator triggers the DDoS
Mitigation request using, for example, a web interface of a DOTS
client communicating to the orchestrator DOTS server. This request
is expected to be associated with a context that provides sufficient
information to the orchestrator DOTS server to infer, elaborate, and
coordinate the appropriate DDoS Mitigation.
Upon receiving a request to mitigate a DDoS attack aimed at a target,
the orchestrator may evaluate the volume of the attack as well as the
value that the target represents. The orchestrator may select the
DDoS Mitigation Service Provider based on the attack severity. It
may also coordinate the DDoS Mitigation performed by the DDoS
Mitigation Service Provider with some other tasks such as, for
example, moving the target to another network so new sessions will
not be impacted. The orchestrator requests a DDoS Mitigation by the
selected DMSs via its DOTS client, as described in Section 3.1.
The orchestrator DOTS client is notified that the DDoS Mitigation is
effective by the selected DMSs. The orchestrator DOTS server returns
this information to the network administrator.
Similarly, when the DDoS attack has stopped, the orchestrator DOTS
client is notified and the orchestrator's DOTS server indicates the
end of the DDoS Mitigation to the DDoS telemetry systems as well as
to the network administrator.
In addition to the DDoS orchestration shown in Figure 4, the selected
DMS can return a mitigation request to the orchestrator as an
offloading. For example, when the DDoS attack becomes severe and the
DMS's utilization rate reaches its maximum capacity, the DMS can send
mitigation requests with additional hints, such as its blocked
traffic information, to the orchestrator. Then the orchestrator can
take further actions such as requesting forwarding nodes (e.g.,
routers) to filter the traffic. In this case, the DMS implements a
DOTS client while the orchestrator implements a DOTS server. Similar
to other DOTS use cases, the offloading scenario assumes that some
validation checks are followed by the DMS, the orchestrator, or both
(e.g., avoid exhausting the resources of the forwarding nodes or
inadvertent disruption of legitimate services). These validation
checks are part of the mitigation and are therefore out of the scope
of the document.
4. Security Considerations
The document does not describe any protocol, though there are still a
few high-level security considerations to discuss.
DOTS is at risk from three primary attacks: DOTS agent impersonation,
traffic injection, and signaling blocking.
Impersonation and traffic injection mitigation can be mitigated
through current secure communications best practices, including
mutual authentication. Preconfigured mitigation steps to take on the
loss of keepalive traffic can partially mitigate signal blocking.
But in general, it is impossible to comprehensively defend against an
attacker that can selectively block any or all traffic. Alternate
communication paths that are (hopefully) not subject to blocking by
the attacker in question is another potential mitigation.
Additional details of DOTS security requirements can be found in
[RFC 8612].
Service disruption may be experienced if inadequate mitigation
actions are applied. These considerations are out of the scope of
DOTS.
5. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.
6. Informative References
[DOTS-MULTIHOMING]
Boucadair, M., Reddy, T., and W. Pan, "Multi-homing
Deployment Considerations for Distributed-Denial-of-
Service Open Threat Signaling (DOTS)", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-dots-multihoming-06, 25 May
2021, <https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dots-
multihoming-06>.
[RFC 8612] Mortensen, A., Reddy, T., and R. Moskowitz, "DDoS Open
Threat Signaling (DOTS) Requirements", RFC 8612,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 8612, May 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8612>.
[RFC 8782] Reddy.K, T., Ed., Boucadair, M., Ed., Patil, P.,
Mortensen, A., and N. Teague, "Distributed Denial-of-
Service Open Threat Signaling (DOTS) Signal Channel
Specification", RFC 8782, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8782, May 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8782>.
[RFC 8783] Boucadair, M., Ed. and T. Reddy.K, Ed., "Distributed
Denial-of-Service Open Threat Signaling (DOTS) Data
Channel Specification", RFC 8783, DOI 10.17487/RFC 8783,
May 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8783>.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank, among others, Tirumaleswar Reddy.K,
Andrew Mortensen, Mohamed Boucadair, Artyom Gavrichenkov, Jon
Shallow, Yuuhei Hayashi, Elwyn Davies, the DOTS WG Chairs (at the
time of writing) Roman Danyliw and Tobias Gondrom, as well as the
Security AD Benjamin Kaduk for their valuable feedback.
We also would like to thank Stephan Fouant, who was one of the
initial coauthors of the documents.
Authors' Addresses
Roland Dobbins
Netscout, Inc.
Singapore
Email: roland.dobbins@netscout.com
Daniel Migault
Ericsson
8275 Trans Canada Route
Saint Laurent, Quebec 4S 0B6
Canada
Email: daniel.migault@ericsson.com
Robert Moskowitz
HTT Consulting
Oak Park, MI 48237
United States of America
Email: rgm@labs.htt-consult.com
Nik Teague
Iron Mountain Data Centers
United Kingdom
Email: nteague@ironmountain.co.uk
Liang Xia
Huawei
No. 101, Software Avenue, Yuhuatai District
Nanjing
China
Email: Frank.xialiang@huawei.com
Kaname Nishizuka
NTT Communications
GranPark 16F
3-4-1 Shibaura, Minato-ku, Tokyo
108-8118
Japan
Email: kaname@nttv6.jp
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 30960 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Thursday, May 27th, 2021
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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