Study Of The Impact Of Side-channel Attacks On Software Defined Networks

Abstract

Software-Defined Networks (SDNs) are a promising new network design paradigm that allows for better control of the network. But as with any new software implementation, there are new security concerns that arise. In the past there have been various papers covering specific side-channel attacks on SDNs; most of them consist of either using time delays in operations to create a covert communication channel between two compromised hosts or using proving packets and their response times to determine the flow rules and configuration of the network.
This paper intents to investigate the impact of different types of side-channel attacks in SDN scenarios. Provide a survey on the state-of-the-art solutions that are proposed to address the side-channel attacks in SDN. Particularly, identifying different ways through which an adversary can launch side-channel attacks, and the different entities and network metrics that are impacted by a specific side-channel attack. Next, identify and survey the solutions available in the state-of-the-art that tackle side-channel attacks. Finally, propose new possible improved solutions to the issue of side-channel attacks in SDNs and future research on the field.
We conclude that current side-channel attacks target the separation control and data planes at the core of the SDN paradigm, by exploiting the response delay created by a centralized logic system in the controller. This as seen can be exploited in two main ways related to the two main attack categories mentioned in this paper: teleportation attacks and recognisance attacks.