Mitigating DNS random subdomain DDoS attacks by distinct heavy hitters sketches

Random Subdomain DDoS a.acks on the Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure are becoming a popular vector in recent a.acks (e.g., recent Mirai a.ack on Dyn). In these a.acks, many queries are sent for a single or a few victim domains, yet they include highly varying non-existent subdomains generated randomly. Motivated by these a.acks we designed and implemented novel and efficient algorithms for distinct heavy hi.ers (dHH). A (classic) heavy hi.er (HH) in a stream of elements is a key (e.g., the domain of a query) which appears in many elements (e.g., requests). When stream elements consist of key, subkey¿ pairs, (domain, subdomain¿) a distinct heavy hi.er (dhh) is a key that is paired with a large number of di.erent subkeys. Our algorithms dominate previous designs in both the asymptotic (theoretical) sense and practicality. Speciffically the new .xed-size algorithms are simple to code and with asymptotically optimal space accuracy tradeoffs. Based on these algorithms, we build and implement a system for detection and mitigation of Random Subdomain DDoS a.acks. We perform experimental evaluation, demonstrating the effectiveness of our algorithms.