Towards Secure End-to-End Network Measurements

Abstract

End-to-end network measurement tools are gaining increasing importance in many Internet services. This is the case since the performance and Quality-of-Service (QoS) of many online applications and ser vices largely depend on their network characteristics. These measurement tools were designed, however, without prior security consideration which, given the current adversarial Internet, renders their extracted network estimates questionable. In this article, we highlight the major security vulnerabilities of existing end-to-end measurement tools and we sketch possible research directions to counter these threats. We further argue that finding “full-fledged” solutions for these challenges might require a serious re-design of the current Internet.