Packet Simulation of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack and Recovery

Abstract

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have been gaining popularity in recent years. Most research developed to defend against DDoS attacks have focused on analytical studies. However, because of the inherent nature of a DDoS attack and the scale of a network involved in the attack, analytical simulations are not always the best way to study DDoS attacks. Moreover, because DDoS attacks are considered illicit, performing real attacks to study their defense mechanisms is not an alternative. For this reason, using packet/network simulators, such as OPNET Modeler, is the best option for research purposes. Detection of an ongoing DDoS attack, as well as simulation of a defense mechanism against the attack, is beyond the scope of this paper. However, this paper includes design recommendations to simulate an effective defense strategy to mitigate DDoS attacks. Finally, this paper introduces network links failure during simulation in an attempt to demonstrate how the network recovers during and following an attack.