Preventing Malicious SDN Applications From Hiding Adverse Network Manipulations
Christian Röpke, Thorsten Holz · 2018
In Software-Defined Networks (SDN), so called SDN controllers are responsible for managing the network devices building such a network. Once such a core component of the network has been infected with malicious software (e.g., by a malicious SDN application), an attacker typically has a strong interest in remaining undetected while compromising other devices in the network. Thus, hiding a malicious network state and corresponding network manipulations are important objectives for an adversary. To achieve this, rootkit techniques can be applied in order to manipulate the SDN controller's view of a network. As a consequence, monitoring capabilities of SDN controllers as well as SDN applications with a security focus can be fooled by hiding adverse network manipulations.