SDN Southbound Threats

SDN (Software-Defined Networks) technologies are based on three pillars: decoupling control and forwarding planes; centralized management with a programmable network; and commodity switches. As with every new technology, the primary concern is always around security. Security concerns are on the rise due to exposing and forwarding internal communications to the network layer. For example, as a result of connecting overseas devices as a single data center or LAN, SDN infrastructure is exposed to external threats. Strategies used for SDN security are similar to legacy networks: defining the perimeters, trust areas, and stakeholders. Monitoring, including logging processes and user activity, is critical to secure the SDN components. Protection against Southbound and Northbound attacks is vital to keep the SDN deployment secured. Due to the concerns about evolving SDN threats and the different components included in their deployment, more informative penetration testing frameworks are needed to test SDN deployment security. The DELTA project (SDN evaluation framework to recognize attack cases against SDN elements and assist in identifying unknown security problems) developed by KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) students, is one such project discussed in this paper.