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Efficient and highly available packet classification is fundamental for various security primitives. In this paper, we evaluate whether the de facto Tuple Space Search (TSS) packet classification algorithm used in popular software networking stacks such as the Open vSwitch is robust against low-rate denial-of-service attacks. We present the Tuple Space Explosion (TSE) attack that exploits the fundamental space/time complexity of the TSS algorithm.

TSE can degrade the switch performance to 12% of its full capacity with a very low packet rate (0.7 Mbps) when the target only has simple policies such as, "allow some, but drop others". Worse, an adversary with additional partial knowledge of these policies can virtually bring down the target with the same low attack rate. Interestingly, TSE does not generate any specific traffic patterns but only requires arbitrary headers and payloads which makes it particularly hard to …