Utilizing OpenFlow and sFlow to Detect and Mitigate SYN Flooding Attack

Abstract

Software Defined Network (SDN) is a new technology in computer network area which enables user to centralize control plane. The security issue is important in computer network to protect system from attackers. SYN flooding attack is one of Distributed Denial of Service attack methods which are popular to degrade availability of targeted service on Internet. There are many methods to protect system from attackers, i.e. firewall and IDS. Even though firewall is designed to protect network system, but it cannot mitigate DDoS attack well because it is not designed to do so. To improve performance of DDOS mitigation we utilize another mechanism by using SDN technology such as OpenFlow and sFlow. The methodology of sFlow to detect attacker is by capturing and sum cumulative traffic from each agent to send to sFlow collector to analyze. When sFlow collector detect some traffics as attacker, OpenFlow controller will modify the rule in OpenFlow table to mitigate attacks by blocking attack traffic. Hence, by combining sum cumulative traffic use sFlow and blocking traffic use OpenFlow we can detect and mitigate SYN flooding attack quickly and cheaply.