SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project proposes to develop an effective solution for Internet route hijack detection, analysis, and mitigation. The Internet routing system is a critical component in the global Internet infrastructure because all other Internet functions depend on the routing system for end-to-end data delivery. Unfortunately today's routing system lacks effective security protection, thus malicious attackers can announce network addresses belonging to others and effectively divert data traffic to locations of the attackers' choice. Such route hijack attacks can lead to denial of service that leaves web site unreachable. If the target of such an attack were online commerce web sites, the financial loss for a 24-hour denial of service attach could be significant. Route hijacking attacks can also open the door to a variety of other more devastating attacks, such as unauthorized traffic capture, identity theft, stolen passwords and credit card information, financial fraud, and other criminal activities. Based on cutting-edge research results from academe, the company proposes to develop an integrated solution to route hijacking. The solution consists of threat awareness, early detection, and automatic recovery. A recent survey showed that route hijacking is one of the top concerns among network operators today. Although there are multiple players in the broad area of network security market, the proposed solution focuses specifically on routing security where the company possess a leading-edge solution. If successfully developed, the solution not only can detect but also can recover from hijack attacks. If deployed, the company has the potential to address a significant pain point in the industry

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase-II project will develop a software-as-a-service product that provides actionable network intelligence to online businesses, enabling them to quickly identify and troubleshoot problems that affect their end users. Studies have shown that a poor end-user experience results in a tangible loss of revenue. Yet, online businesses are dependent not only on their own infrastructure, but on the state of the rest of the Internet as well. From the end user perspective, problems with the network infrastructure, third-party content provider issues, or traffic redirection attacks can result in sites being unavailable or slow. Hence, outside-to-inside monitoring of online services is critical for any Internet business if they wish to remain competitive. Unfortunately, existing products often treat the Internet as a black box. They are unable to capture where things have gone wrong or what could be improved inside the network. In this Phase-II proposal, the company takes a bottom-up approach to capturing end-user experience by focusing on understanding and measuring the components of the Internet infrastructure (such as DNS) that are responsible for data delivery. If this effort is successful, businesses will be able to ensure that their service is globally available, proactively identify performance bottlenecks at the network level, and be alerted immediately when under a traffic redirection attack. Businesses that operate on the Internet expect data from monitoring services to be actionable. While some products provide actionable information regarding problem components in web pages, The company offers actionable insight into the network infrastructure that drives content delivery to end users. The impact of this technology is two-fold. First, the technology enables customers to improve content delivery to their end users, which leads to increased revenues. Second, the technology can protect businesses from falling prey to traffic redirection attacks, protecting both themselves and their users from financial losses due to fraud. If successfully deployed, the proposed innovation will address an emerging and significant pain point for online merchants and service providers alike