The Impact of ICMP Attacks in Software-Defined Network Environments

Abstract

Due to the tremendous growth in network technologies, there is a huge increase in the number of devices connected to the Internet on a daily basis. Currently, network techniques are used in inter-discipline domains like health care, agriculture, manufacturing industries, and commerce. Traditional network architecture faces huge challenges due to the increase in demand for the connectivity. In the current scenario, more than 60% of industries are still using traditional networks, whereas software-defined networks (SDN) and virtualization concepts are slowly starting to replace the current infrastructure. In recent years, SDN was deployed very fast due to its advanced features like flexibility, scalability, and centralized monitoring. Software-defined networks also add network programmability as well as other capabilities to increase network adaptability by reacting to continually shifting network conditions and making network certification and implementation easier. Although certain new capabilities have already been added to the SDN to improve network management easier, various new kinds of vulnerabilities have evolved as a result of a lack of security concerns in the SDN architecture's original design. This research work mainly focuses on SDN security attacks based on the Internet control message protocol (ICMP). Even though ICMP protocol is used by network administrators to troubleshoot network devices, the protocol itself is more vulnerable in the SDN network environment. The paper addresses three recent attacks that have a huge impact on SDN networks such as the application layer flooding attacks, distributed denial of service attacks, and unintended DoS attacks.