MESec: Minimal-Exposure AS-Path Verification against BGP Post-ROV Attacks#

Jiangou Zhan, Tsinghua University

• Why: With ~49% of IPv4 prefixes ROA-protected and ~37% of ASes doing ROV, attackers move to path manipulation and route leaks — but ASPA's requirement to publish customer-provider relationships globally is commercially toxic. This is the sharpest articulation of that adoption dilemma at the conference, with a real alternative.
• What: MEASPV, a framework that decouples path validation from topology disclosure: relationship attestations are visible only to designated trusted validators, never broadcast. Evaluation shows a security posture comparable to standard ASPA against post-ROV threats, with minimal information exposure and incremental deployability (no BGP-4 message changes).
• How: Validator-assisted, three phases: trust establishment (ASes share encrypted, authenticated neighbor-relationship data with chosen validators), path verification on each BGP UPDATE (validators return Type-I high-trust direct reports plus Type-II public-data checks from CAIDA/RouteViews; results aggregate into a score from Strong-Valid to Strong-Suspect), and secure route selection using the score as a BGP decision-process tie-breaker. Caching of per-pair scores (1–5 day refresh, path score = minimum) keeps latency and control traffic low. The authors also prove a lower bound: any effective defense must expose relationship data to at least one third-party verifier — the question is how few.
• Where applicable: Research framework, not deployed; requires a trusted-validator ecosystem. Conceptually important for anyone designing ASPA-adjacent or attestation-based path security, including in private fabrics where a neutral validator is easier to stand up.