Mitigation of cyber threats: Protection mechanisms in federated SDN/NFV infrastructures for 5G within FIRE+

Abstract

SummaryCyber attacks are becoming a very common trend in existing networks, expecting to be even more acute in future 5G networks due to greater number of connected devices, higher mobile data volume, low latency, etc. Security mechanisms to tackle cyber threats should be updated when users, possibly carrying devices with some kind of malware, move in highly dynamic mobile networks in order to continue providing the same detection and mitigation capabilities along user's path. This paper presents BotsOnFIRE, an experiment of the EU H2020 SoftFIRE project for the detection and mitigation of botnets in the SoftFIRE federated testbed for 5G within FIRE+, by combining Software‐Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) technologies. Bots' mobility is considered to trigger reconfiguration of security‐related SDN/NFV applications, when needed, so as to update security capabilities of the SoftFIRE infrastructure. The BotsOnFIRE experiment contributes to the wider 5G objective of more secure and resilient networks and services, where botnets are actually one of the most powerful cyber threats capable of orchestrating the remote execution of cyber‐attacks. Experiments confirm that BotsOnFIRE is feasible to conduct the expected detection and mitigation procedures in the SoftFIRE federated environment, being evaluated through some Key Performance Indicators.