A Study on Securing Software Defined Networks

Most of the IT infrastructure across the globe is virtualized and is backed by Software Defined Networks (SDN). Hence, any threat to SDN's core components would potentially mean to harm today's Internet and the very fabric of utility computing. After thorough analysis, this study identifies Crossfire link flooding technique as one of the lethal attacks that can potentially target the link connecting the control plane to the data plane in SDNs. In such a situation, the control plane may get disconnected, resulting in the degradation of the performance of the whole network and service disruption. In this work we present a detailed comparative analysis of the link flooding mitigation techniques and propose a framework for effective defense. It comprises of a separate controller consisting of a flood detection module, a link listener module and a flood detection module, which will work together to detect and mitigate attacks and facilitate the normal flow of traffic. This paper serves as a first effort towards identifying and mitigating the crossfire LFA on the channel that connects control plane to data plane in SDNs. We expect that further optimizations in the proposed solution can bring remarkable results.