Leverage Slow-port-exhaustion Attacks by Exploiting Abnormal Connections from IoT Devices and Docker Containers

Abstract

Recently, with the proliferation of IoT devices, network technologies have also rapidly developed to serve the rising needs of users. IoT devices are often complemented by cloud computing technology to provide better services. Fog computing was introduced as a method to bring cloud applications closer to IoT devices so that end-users could avoid communication latency. An edge device at the fog node could use Network Functions Virtualization to optimize its performance and resource management. However, recent research has shown that certain fundamental virtual switch settings can be misused to carry out cyberattacks. In previous research, we proposed Slow-port-exhaustion DoS Attack, an attack that targets virtual switches using the Port Address Translation mechanism for communication between virtual machines and the physical network. In this attack, an attacker with a low amount of attack bandwidth can sabotage the virtual switch by occupying all of the host machine's ports for a long period of time. In this paper, we introduce some methods for exploiting IoT devices to leverage this attack. We also perform experimental attacks with new methods and compare the results with the old methods. Finally, we suggest some countermeasures against this kind of attack.