An In-depth Look Into SDN Topology Discovery Mechanisms
Eduard Marin, Nicola Bucciol, Mauro Conti · 2019
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a novel network approach that has revolutionised existent network architectures by decoupling the control plane from the data plane. Researchers have shown that SDN networks are highly vulnerable to security attacks. For instance, adversaries can tamper with the controller's network topology view to hijack the hosts' location or create fake inter-switch links. These attacks can be launched for various purposes, ranging from impersonating hosts to bypassing middleboxes or intercepting network traffic. Several countermeasures have been proposed to mitigate topology attacks but to date there has been no comprehensive analysis of the level of security they offer. A critical analysis is thus an important step towards better understanding the possible limitations of the existing solutions and building stronger defences against topology attacks.