DETECTING AND PREVENTING UNDESIRABLE NETWORK TRAFFIC FROM BEING SOURCED OUT OF A NETWORK DOMAIN

摘要

The present invention provides for a novel approach to protecting a system owner's system(s) from being exploited in providing involuntary assistance to a DOS attack. The present invention provides the protection by detecting and preventing undesirable or inappropriate network traffic from being sourced from a network domain. More specifically, a monitor/regulator (102) is provided to monitor network traffic leaving a network domain (104). The monitor/regulator (102) determines if undesirable/inappropriate network traffics are leaving the network domain based on the observed (110) characteristics of the outbound and inbound network traffics (106). If it is determined that undesirable/inappropriate network traffics are leaving the network domain, the monitors/regulator (102), in one embodiment, at least warns system owners of the detection. In another embodiment, the monitors/regulator (102) further issues regulation (112) instruction(s) to boundary routing device(s) of the network domain(s), thereby preventing the network domain(s) from being exploited to source such undesirable/inappropriate network traffics.