BQSV: Protecting SDN controller cluster’s network topology view based on byzantine quorum system with verification function

Abstract

In Software-defined network (SDN), SDN applications and administrators rely on the logically centralized view of the network topology to make management decisions. Therefore, the correctness of SDN controller cluster’s network topology view becomes critical. However, the lack of security mechanism in SDN controller cluster makes the network topology view easy to be tampered with. In this paper, we argue that malicious controllers in a cluster can easily damage the network view of the cluster through the east-west bound interfaces. We present a scheme based on Byzantine Quorum System with verification function (BQSV) to prevent malicious controllers from manipulating the cluster’s network view through east-west bound interface and providing wrong topology information to SDN applications and administrators. Moreover, we implement the prototype of our scheme and extensive experiments to show that the proposed scheme can prevent malicious controllers from damaging the topology information of the cluster with trivial overheads.