Biblio

Dynamic network security services have been proposed exploiting the benefits of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) technologies. However, many of these services rely on controller interaction, which presents a performance and scalability challenge, and a threat vector. To overcome the performance issue, stateful data-plane designs have been proposed. Unfortunately, these solutions do not offer protection from attacks that exploit the SDN implementation of network functions such as topology and path update, or services such as the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). In this work, we propose state-based SDN security protection mechanisms. Our stateful security data plane solution, OFMTL-SEC, is designed to provide protection against attacks on SDN and traditional network services. Specifically, we present a novel data plane protection against configuration-based attacks in SDN and against ARP spoofing. OFMTL-SEC is compared with the state-of-the-art solutions and offers increased security to SDNs with negligible performance impact.

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.