FIGHT-THROUGH NODES FOR SURVIVABLE COMPUTER NETWORK

摘要

A survivable network is described in which one or more network device includes enhanced functionality to fight through cyber attacks. A Fight-Through Node (FTN) is described, which may be a combined hardware/software system that enhances existing networks with survivability properties. A network node comprises a hardware-based processing system having a set of one or more processing units, a hypervisor executing on each one of the processing units, and a plurality of virtual machines executing on each of the hypervisor. The network node includes an application-level dispatcher to receive a plurality of transaction requests from a plurality of network communication session with a plurality of clients and distribute a copy of each of the transaction requests to the plurality of virtual machines executing on the network node over a plurality of time steps to form a processing pipeline of the virtual machines.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
receiving a plurality of transaction requests associated with one or more network communication sessions; distributing copies of the transaction requests to a plurality of virtual machines over a plurality of time steps to form a processing pipeline of the virtual machines; upon dispatching a threshold number (n) of the transaction requests to the plurality of virtual machines, detecting whether any of the virtual machines in the processing pipeline has been compromised; when none of the virtual machines in the processing pipeline has been compromised, check-pointing the processing pipeline of virtual machines by recording a state for each of the plurality of virtual machines; when at least one of the virtual machines in the processing pipeline has been compromised, removing the compromised virtual machines from the processing pipeline; and reordering the processing pipeline by promoting the non-compromised virtual machines to earlier stages in the processing pipeline that correspond to stages associated with the removed virtual machines that have been compromised.