Biblio

The deployment of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) technologies is increasing, with security as a recognized application driving adoption. However, despite the potential with SDN/NFV for automated and adaptive network security services, the controller interaction presents both a performance and scalability challenge, and a threat vector. To overcome the performance issue, stateful data-plane designs have been proposed. However, these solutions do not offer protection from SDN-specific attacks linked to necessary control functions such as link reconfiguration and switch identification. In this work, we leverage the OpenState framework to introduce state-based SDN security protection mechanisms. The extensions required for this design are presented with respect to an SDN configuration-based attack. The demonstration shows the ability of the SDN Configuration (CFG) security protection mechanism to support legitimate relocation requests and to protect against malicious connection attempts.

The process of digitalisation has an advanced impact on social lives, state affairs, and the industrial automation domain. Ubiquitous networks and the increased requirements in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) create the demand for future-proof network management. Therefore, new technological approaches, such as Software-Defined Networks (SDN) or the 5G Network Slicing concept, are considered. However, the important topic of cyber security has mainly been ignored in the past. Recently, this topic has gained a lot of attention due to frequently reported security related incidents, such as industrial espionage, or production system manipulations. Hence, this work proposes a concept for adding cyber security requirements to future network management paradigms. For this purpose, various security related standards and guidelines are available. However, these approaches are mainly static, require a high amount of manual efforts by experts, and need to be performed in a steady manner. Therefore, the proposed solution contains a dynamic, machine-readable, automatic, continuous, and future-proof approach to model and describe cyber security QoS requirements for the next generation network management.

The process of digitalisation has an advanced impact on social lives, state affairs, and the industrial automation domain. Ubiquitous networks and the increased requirements in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) create the demand for future-proof network management. Therefore, new technological approaches, such as Software-Defined Networks (SDN) or the 5G Network Slicing concept, are considered. However, the important topic of cyber security has mainly been ignored in the past. Recently, this topic has gained a lot of attention due to frequently reported security related incidents, such as industrial espionage, or production system manipulations. Hence, this work proposes a concept for adding cyber security requirements to future network management paradigms. For this purpose, various security related standards and guidelines are available. However, these approaches are mainly static, require a high amount of manual efforts by experts, and need to be performed in a steady manner. Therefore, the proposed solution contains a dynamic, machine-readable, automatic, continuous, and future-proof approach to model and describe cyber security QoS requirements for the next generation network management.

Mobility and multihoming have become the norm in Internet access, e.g. smartphones with Wi-Fi and LTE, and connected vehicles with LTE and DSRC links that change rapidly. Mobility creates challenges for active session continuity when provider-aggregatable locators are used, while multihoming brings opportunities for improving resiliency and allocative efficiency. This paper proposes a novel migration protocol, in the context of the eXpressive Internet Architecture (XIA), the XIA Migration Protocol. We compare it with Mobile IPv6, with respect to handoff latency and overhead, flow migration support, and defense against spoofing and replay of protocol messages. Handoff latencies of the XIA Migration Protocol and Mobile IPv6 Enhanced Route Optimization are comparable and neither protocol opens up avenues for spoofing or replay attacks. However, XIA requires no mobility anchor point to support client mobility while Mobile IPv6 always depends on a home agent. We show that XIA has significant advantage over IPv6 for multihomed hosts and networks in terms of resiliency, scalability, load balancing and allocative efficiency. IPv6 multihoming solutions either forgo scalability (BGP-based) or sacrifice resiliency (NAT-based), while XIA's fallback-based multihoming provides fault tolerance without a heavy-weight protocol. XIA also allows fine-grained incoming load-balancing and QoS-matching by supporting flow migration. Flow migration is not possible using Mobile IPv6 when a single IPv6 address is associated with multiple flows. From a protocol design and architectural perspective, the key enablers of these benefits are flow-level migration, XIA's DAG-based locators and self-certifying identifiers.

Software Defined Networks (SDNs) have gained prominence recently due to their flexible management and superior configuration functionality of the underlying network. SDNs, with OpenFlow as their primary implementation, allow for the use of a centralised controller to drive the decision making for all the supported devices in the network and manage traffic through routing table changes for incoming flows. In conventional networks, machine learning has been shown to detect malicious intrusion, and classify attacks such as DoS, user to root, and probe attacks. In this work, we extend the use of machine learning to improve traffic tolerance for SDNs. To achieve this, we extend the functionality of the controller to include a resilience framework, ReSDN, that incorporates machine learning to be able to distinguish DoS attacks, focussing on a neptune attack for our experiments. Our model is trained using the MIT KDD 1999 dataset. The system is developed as a module on top of the POX controller platform and evaluated using the Mininet simulator.

Software defined networking promises network operators to dramatically simplify network management. It provides flexibility and innovation through network programmability. With SDN, network management moves from codifying functionality in terms of low-level device configuration to building software that facilitates network management and debugging[1]. SDN provides new techniques to solve long-standing problems in networking like routing by separating the complexity of state distribution from network specification. Despite all the hype surrounding SDNs, exploiting its full potential is demanding. Security is still the major issue and a striking challenge that reduces the growth of SDNs. Moreover the introduction of various architectural components and up cycling of novel entities of SDN poses new security issues and threats. SDN is considered as major target for digital threats and cyber-attacks[2] and have more devastating effects than simple networks. Initial SDN design doesn't considered security as its part; therefore, it must be raised on the agenda. This article discusses the security solutions proposed to secure SDNs. We categorize the security solutions in the article by presenting a thematic taxonomy based on SDN architectural layers/interfaces[3], security measures and goals, simulation framework. Moreover, the literature also points out the possible attacks[2] targeting different layers/interfaces of SDNs. For securing SDNs, the potential requirements and their key enablers are also identified and presented. Also, the articles sketch the design of secure and dependable SDNs. At last, we discuss open issues and challenges of SDN security that may be rated appropriate to be handled by professionals and researchers in the future.

The OpenFlow architecture is a proposal from the Clean Slate initiative to define a new Internet architecture where the network devices are simple, and the control and management plane is performed by a centralized controller. The simplicity and centralization architecture makes it reliable and inexpensive. However, this architecture does not provide mechanisms to detect conflicting in flows, allowing that unreachable flows can be configured in the network elements, and the network may not behave as expected. This paper proposes an approach to conflict detection using first-order logic to define possible antagonisms and employ an inference engine to detect conflicting flows before the OpenFlow controller implement in the network elements.
 

Efficient authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) management mechanisms will be key for the widespread adoption of SDN experimentation facilities beyond the confines of academic labs. In particular, we are interested in a robust AAA infrastructure to identify experimenters, police their actions based on the associated roles, facilitate secure resource sharing, and provide for detailed accountability. Currently, however, said facilities are forced to employ a patchy AAA infrastructure which lacks several of the aforementioned features. This paper proposes a certificate-based AAA architecture for SDN experimental facilities, which is by design both secure and flexible. As this work is implementation-driven and aims for a short deployment cycle in current facilities, we also outline a credible migration path which we are currently pursuing actively.
 

The goal of this letter is to explore the extent to which the vulnerabilities plaguing the Internet, particularly susceptibility to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, impact the Cloud. DDoS has been known to disrupt Cloud services, but could it do worse by permanently damaging server and switch hardware? Services are hosted in data centers with thousands of servers generating large amounts of heat. Heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems prevent server downtime due to overheating. These are remotely managed using network management protocols that are susceptible to network attacks. Recently, Cloud providers have experienced outages due to HVAC malfunctions. Our contributions include a network simulation to study the feasibility of such an attack motivated by our experiences of such a security incident in a real data center. It demonstrates how a network simulator can study the interplay of the communication and thermal properties of a network and help prevent the Cloud provider's worst nightmare: meltdown of the data center as a result of a DDoS attack.