Abstract
The future smart grids (SGs) require advanced capabilities in terms of automation, processing, monitoring, and communication. The most crucial component in the successful sustainability of SGs is communication management. In the vSDNs, a hypervisor is implemented between a physical infrastructure and a control plane that abstracts the underlying SDN infrastructure into multiple isolated virtual slices, i.e., we can have multiple vSDNs each with its controller. For that purpose, the virtualized SDNs offer a promising solution as they offer better network management, programmability, and virtualization. However, vSDN-based SGs are prone to many security issues. To disturb operations of the SGs, the security of the vSDN can be compromised by manipulating the jeopardized switches in the DDoS attacks to repress the resources of vSDN controllers. To prevent the exploitation of a vSDN-based SG architecture and preserve its limited resources, this paper formulates the strategic interaction between a hypervisor monitoring its vSDN controllers and the source of new flow requests potentially launching a DDoS attack, via compromised switches, as a non-cooperative dynamic Bayesian game of intrusion detection. Our game model enables a hypervisor to distribute its limited resources to monitor guest vSDN controllers optimally. The performance evaluation via simulations shows that our game model enables a hypervisor not only to increase the probability of detecting distributed attacks and minimize false positives but at the same time, its monitoring costs get reduced as the allocation of resources to monitor vSDN controllers depends upon its belief about the source of the attacks that it forms based on its observation.
Highlights
This section provided a comprehensive overview of the existing detection and mitigation schemes against the DDoS attacks in the control plane of SDNs
We conclude that these solutions do not consider the limited controller resources for optimal performance, as well as, they are based on the false assumption that the compromised switch will always behave maliciously
Our work is the first in the domain of virtual SDN (vSDN) to provide optimal load distribution for the detection of the compromised switches participating in the DDoS attack
Summary
Smart grid (SG) is a critically important infrastructure designed to replace the conventional power grid. We present a dynamic Bayesian game-theoretic intrusion detection model against the DDoS attacks on the control layer to ensure flexible operations of a vSDN-based SG networks. The proposed game model enables a hypervisor to optimally allocate its resources to monitor the vSDN controller it hosts to detect an intrusion, while at the same time, mitigating severe damage to the functionality of vSDNs. A. It is a resource-aware detection model that enables a hypervisor to efficiently monitor its hosted vSDN controllers by distributing monitoring resources over them and provides maximum detection without overspending the security resources on monitoring This model addresses the realistic approach of a malicious entity, which via a compromised switch aims to minimize its detection by deviating its behavior between a normal and a malicious entity. We assess the impact of the following parameters on the strategies of both the players: a) financial worth of the controllers, b) cost of monitoring, c) gain cost ratio, d) detection rate and e) false alarm rate
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