DefCOM: defensive cooperative overlay mesh

Distributed denial-of-service attacks can only be stopped with a distributed defense system. To be widely deployed, this system must accommodate diverse defense nodes, provide secure communication channels for participants to cooperate and exchange information, guarantee high effectiveness of the response and minimal collateral damage, and offer strong economic incentives for all involved parties. We present DefCOM-a distributed defense system that builds an overlay network of heterogeneous defense nodes. These nodes communicate via the overlay to achieve dynamic cooperative defense. DefCOM is specifically geared towards incremental, non-contiguous deployment, and has a good economic model to accelerate its wide acceptance.