Vulnerability analysis of software defined networking

Abstract

Security of Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an open issue because of many reasons. Security requirements were not considered in the primary definition of SDN. Consequently, SDN enlarges the network vulnerability surface by introducing new vulnerabilities that do not exist in the conventional networking architecture. In addition, there are neither security risk management processes nor mathematical models that specifically address SDN security and the influence of its specific features. We provide a vulnerability analysis for SDN to study these weaknesses and to measure their impacts. Our analysis specifies a model of SDN assets that needs to be protected. Then, it derives 114 SDN generic vulnerabilities using standardized security objectives. It relies on an open standardized semi qualitative semi quantitative scoring system to calculate the severities of theses vulnerabilities. Then, it adapts them to SDN specific features using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP).