Polymorphic Path Transferring for Secure Flow Delivery

Abstract

In most cases, the routing policy of networks shows a preference for a static one-to-one mapping of communication pairs to routing paths, which offers adversaries a great advantage to conduct thorough reconnaissance and organize an effective attack in a stress-free manner. With the evolution of network intelligence, some flexible and adaptive routing policies have already proposed to intensify the network defender to turn the situation. Routing mutation is an effective strategy that can invalidate the unvarying nature of routing information that attackers have collected from exploiting the static configuration of the network. However, three constraints execute press on routing mutation deployment in practical: insufficient route mutation space, expensive control costs, and incompatibility. To enhance the availability of route mutation, we propose an OpenFlow-based route mutation technique called Polymorphic Path Transferring (PPT), which adopts a physical and virtual path segment mixed construction technique to enlarge the routing path space for elevating the security of communication. Based on the Markov Decision Process, with considering flows distribution in the network, the PPT adopts an evolution routing path scheduling algorithm with a segment path update strategy, which relieves the press on the overhead of control and incompatibility. Our analysis demonstrates that PPT can secure data delivery in the worst network environment while countering sophisticated attacks in an evasion-free manner (e.g., advanced persistent threat). Case study and experiment results show its effectiveness in proactively defending against targeted attacks and its advantage compared with previous route mutation methods.