A New Low-rate DoS Attack Method Robust to Timing Skew for TCP Short Transfers

It is posited that Low-rate DoS (LDoS) attack against TCP short transfer has not yet been studied. Since LDoS attacks use pulse-shaped attack traffic, the probability of an attack pulse colliding with the targeted traffic is low when the transfer time is short. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of the Shrew LDoS method against short transfers. In the Shrew method, the time difference between the targeted traffic and the attack traffic, i.e., the attack timing skew, has a large impact on the attack effectiveness for short transfers. Therefore, we proposed the First-Attack Pulse Width Expansion Shrew (Fawe-Shrew) method to improve the attack effectiveness in the presence of this skew. We confirmed that the proposed method has increased tolerance of the skew in the attack initiation timing.