Towards rule enforcement verification for software defined networks

Abstract

Software defined networks (SDNs) reshape the ossified network architectures, by introducing centralized and programmable network control. Despite the huge benefits, SDNs also open doors to what we call rule modification attack, an attack largely overlooked by the community. In such an attack, the adversary can modify rules by exploiting implementation vulnerabilities of switch OSes and control channels. As a result, packets may deviate from their original paths, thereby violating network policies. To defend against rule modification attack, this paper introduces a new security primitive named rule enforcement verification (REV). REV allows a controller to check whether switches have enforced the rules installed by it, using message authentication code (MAC). Since using standard MACs will incur heavy switch-to-controller traffic, this paper proposes a new compressive MAC, which allows switches to compress MACs before reporting to the controller. Experiments show that REV based on compressive MAC can achieve a 97% reduction in switch-to-controller traffic, and a Sx increase in verification throughput.