Biblio
A time-delay switch (TDS) cyber attack is a deliberate attempt by malicious adversaries aiming at destabilizing a power system by impeding the communication signals to/from the centralized controller from/to the network sensors and generating stations that participate in the load frequency control (LFC). A TDS cyber attack can be targeting the sensing loops (transmitting network measurements to the centralized controller) or the control signals dispatched from the centralized controller to the governor valves of the generating stations. A resilient TDS control strategy is proposed and developed in this work that thwarts network instabilities that are caused by delays in the sensing loops, and control commands, and guarantees normal operation of the LFC mechanism. This will be achieved by augmenting the telemetered control commands with locally generated feedback control laws (i.e., “decentralized” control commands) taking measurements that are available and accessible at the power generating stations (locally) independent from all the telemetered signals to/from the centralized controller. Our objective is to devise a controller that is capable of circumventing all types of TDS and DoS (Denial of Service) cyber attacks as well as a broad class of False Data Injection (FDI) cyber attacks.
Denial of service (DoS) is a process of injecting malicious packets into the network. Intrusion detection system (IDS) is a system used to investigate malicious packets in the network. Software-defined network (SDN) physically separates control plane and data plane. The control plane is moved to a centralized controller, and it makes a decision in the network from a global view. The combination between IDS and SDN allows the prevention of malicious packets to be more efficient due to the advantage of the global view in SDN. IDS needs to communicate with switches to have an access to all end-to-end traffic in the network. The high traffic in the link between switches and IDS results in congestion. The congestion between switches and IDS delays the detection and prevention of malicious traffic. To address this problem, we propose a historical database (Hdb), a scheme to reduce the traffic between switches and IDS, based on the historical information of a sender. The simulation shows that in the average, 54.1% of traffic mirrored to IDS is reduced compared to the conventional schemes.
Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a paradigm shift that changes the working principles of IP networks by separating the control logic from routers and switches, and logically centralizing it within a controller. In this architecture the control plane (controller) communicates with the data plane (switches) through a control channel using a standards-compliant protocol, that is, OpenFlow. While having a centralized controller creates an opportunity to monitor and program the entire network, as a side effect, it causes the control plane to become a single point of failure. Denial of service (DoS) attacks or even heavy control traffic conditions can easily become real threats to the proper functioning of the controller, which indirectly detriments the entire network. In this paper, we propose a solution to reduce the control traffic generated primarily during table-miss events. We utilize the buffer\_id feature of the OpenFlow protocol, which has been designed to identify individually buffered packets within a switch, reusing it to identify flows buffered as a series of packets during table-miss, which happens when there is no related rule in the switch flow tables that matches the received packet. Thus, we allow the OpenFlow switch to send only the first packet of a flow to the controller for a table-miss while buffering the rest of the packets in the switch memory until the controller responds or time out occurs. The test results show that OpenFlow traffic is significantly reduced when the proposed method is used.
One of the recent focuses in Cloud Computing networks is Software Defined Clouds (SDC), where the Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technology is combined with the traditional Cloud network. SDC is aimed to create an effective Cloud environment by extending the virtualization concept to all resources. In that, the control plane is decoupled from the data plane in a network device and controlled by the centralized controller using the OpenFlow Protocol (OFP). As the centralized controller performs all control functions in a network, it requires strong security. Already, Cloud Computing faces many security challenges. Most vulnerable attacks in SDC is Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed DoS (DDoS) attacks. To overcome the DoS attacks, we propose a distributed Firewall with Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) for SDC. The proposed distributed security mechanism is investigated for two DoS attacks, ICMP and SYN flooding attacks for different network scenarios. From the simulation results and discussion, we showed that the distributed Firewall with IPS security detects and prevents the DoS attack effectively.
The evolution of information and communication technologies has brought new challenges in managing the Internet. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) aims to provide easily configured and remotely controlled networks based on centralized control. Since SDN will be the next disruption in networking, SDN security has become a hot research topic because of its importance in communication systems. A centralized controller can become a focal point of attack, thus preventing attack in controller will be a priority. The whole network will be affected if attacker gain access to the controller. One of the attacks that affect SDN controller is DDoS attacks. This paper reviews different detection techniques that are available to prevent DDoS attacks, characteristics of these techniques and issues that may arise using these techniques.
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.
In this paper we address the problem of designing a fault tolerant control scheme for an HVAC control system where sensing and actuation data are exchanged with a centralized controller via a wireless sensors and actuators network where the communication nodes are subject to permanent failures and malicious intrusions.