A Technique of Topology Obfuscation Against Active Topology Inference

Protecting critical information infrastructure is a frontier of current cyberspace security research. This paper firstly introduces the concepts and common methods of topology inference and topology obfuscation. Then, an improved topology obfuscation method is proposed for active topology inference represented by trace route. It improves the selection algorithm of deployment nodes, adding virtual nodes and links by replicating the key topologies of the real network. For attackers who use traceroute for topology inference, this method will mislead them to obtain wrong node importance ranking. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed topology obfuscation method can effectively against active topology inference in typical star-structured topology network.