Study on IP Prefix Hijacking in Cloud Computing Networks Based on Attack Planning

Due to the great dependence on Internet routing infrastructure, cloud services are vulnerable to IP prefix hijacking attacks which can destroy the confidentiality and integrity of user data. It is important to understand what impact a prefix hijacking attack can cause and how the number and locations of participants can affect the attacking results. In this paper, considering both attacking and detecting, we innovatively model this problem as an attack planning task, and solve it by applying a genetic algorithm. By analyzing the best solution to the problem, we find that the type of victims plays a more important role in IP prefix hijacking than that of attackers. We also find that attackers can gain great impact even when the prefixes of a small number of victims are hijacked. For attack planning, the degree of an AS is a major criterion to be considered. These findings are useful for securing cloud computing networks by preventing and eliminating IP prefix hijacking.