Five researchers from the DACS group [*] published an open letter today, calling for a Collaborative Anti-DDoS initiative. Their goal is a call to action for providers of critical infrastructure in The Netherlands to stop combating DDoS individually, and to start working together to combat this increasing threat to society.
With the attacks on the Dutch banks and government websites that occurred earlier this year in mind, it is clearer than ever that our society strongly depends on Internet services. Combine that with the fact that attacks on the Internet keep growing in size and sophistication, and it is clear that it is no longer sufficient to combat these attacks in isolation. In the open letter, the DACS researchers call on key players in the Internet infrastructure of The Netherlands to start collaborating by sharing data on ongoing attacks and by working to build a smart sensor network to detect attempts to subvert systems for attacks. With this information, collaborating parties can then be better prepared to defend against attacks, but equally importantly, we can make headway in attributing attacks to specific perpetrators, something that is notoriously difficult at the moment.
Read the open letter about the initiative on the website of dcypher:
https://www.dcypher.nl/en/content/column-proactive-and-collaborative-ddos-mitigation-strategy
Or listen to the interview on Dutch public radio (in Dutch):
https://www.nporadio1.nl/nos-radio-1-journaal/onderwerpen/450853-experts-pleiten-voor-nationale-firewall-tegen-ddos-aanvallen
[*] Cristian Hesselman, Jeroen van der Ham, Roland van Rijswijk, Jair Santanna and Aiko Pras
