An efficient zero-knowledge proof based identification scheme for securing software defined network

Abstract

Researchers and enterprise networks are extensively adopting Software Defined Networking (SDN) due to its feature of decoupling data and control planes from network devices which enable them to implement new networking ideas to solve networking issues like the lack of security. Communication between data and control planes in SDN faces various security issues where many users in data plane approach controller device in control plane to gain networking policies. In this paper, we proposed an efficient Zero-knowledge proof based identification scheme for securing the SDN controller during data and control plane communication. This scheme ensures that only users who prove their knowledge about secrecy without revealing the actual secret or any other information about it can communicate with the controller. The computation cost, communication cost and storage overhead analysis are discussed along with the security analysis to validate the efficiency of the proposed work.