Abstract
The increasing availability of mobile devices and applications, the progress in virtualisation technologies, and advances in the development of cloud-based distributed data centres have significantly stimulated the growing interest in the use of software-defined networks (SDNs) for both wired and wireless applications. Standards-based software abstraction between the network control plane and the underlying data forwarding plane, including both physical and virtual devices, provides an opportunity to significantly increase network security. In this paper, to secure SDNs against intruders’ actions, we propose a comprehensive system that exploits the advantages of SDNs’ native features and implements data mining to detect and classify malicious flows in the SDN data plane. The architecture of the system and its mechanisms are described, with an emphasis on flow rule generation and flow classification. The concept was verified in the SDN testbed environment that reflects typical SDN flows. The experiments confirmed that the system can be successfully implemented in SDNs to mitigate threats caused by different malicious activities of intruders. The results show that our combination of data mining techniques provides better detection and classification of malicious flows than other solutions.
Highlights
A traditional communication network comprises interconnected and individually configured devices for forwarding data packets
It was assumed that malicious flow detection was performed in off-line passive mode, i.e., the core detection process occurs after the completion of flow feature measurements on a data mining platform
We described the promising concept of using data mining techniques for the detection and classification of malicious flows in the software-defined networks (SDNs) data plane, with a focus on the presentation of flow rule generation and flow classification mechanisms
Summary
A traditional communication network comprises interconnected and individually configured devices for forwarding data packets. Lee et al [5] discussed SDN security issues resulting from attacks on the northern interface, involving taking control of network applications or introducing malicious software. Such attacks cause illegal actions, e.g., the manipulation of flow rules, redirecting packets to an unauthorised recipient, or blocking selected traffic flows. The authors classified security solutions in terms of SDN layers/interfaces, security measures, simulation environments, and security objectives, as well as providing their own view on potential security requirements and key enablers for securing SDNs. standards-based software abstraction between the network control plane and the underlying data forwarding plane, including both physical and virtual devices, provides an opportunity to significantly increase network security by using native SDN features, as discussed by Shin et al [8] and Yoon et al [9]. The paper concludes with some remarks and proposals for the future
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