SDN‐chain: Privacy‐preserving protocol for software defined networks using blockchain

Abstract

Software-defined networking (SDN) is a programmable architecture for networking domain in which the security is provided by devising the network policies with the help of the network administrator. This is very cumbersome for the administrator to handle different attacks at various planes in SDN architecture. Blockchain can be used to prevent various attacks in SDN by providing a decentralization authentication environment. In this article, a secure Blockchain-based privacy-preserving protocol is proposed to thwart various security vulnerabilities in the SDN architecture. The proposed approach uses Modified-Delegated Proof of Stake as the consensus protocol to ensure safety and reliability in the network. Besides, a security protocol is designed using cryptographic primitives and analyzed using a detailed security analysis. Initially, the consensus protocols are implemented using solidity smart contracts and deployed to the public Blockchain using Ethereum. Consequently, the proposed approach is simulated on OMNet++ using INET framework. The experimental results show that the proposed SDN-Chain is secure, efficient, less incentive to centralize, and practically implementable in resource-limited wireless and mobile environments.

Privacy-Preserving and Security in SDN-Based IoT: A Survey

“…The researcher in [25] has considered this issue and suggested using blockchain to overcome it. IoT systems [60] x x x ✓ ✓ Improving level of trust between different vendors by using blockchain for SDN solutions [61] x x x ✓ ✓ Improving level of trust between different nodes by using blockchain for SDN solutions [62] x x x ✓ ✓ Improving level of security in blockchain by using SDN in its network for filtering the packets [63] x x x ✓ ✓ Using SDN to prevent DNS amplification attack in the private Blockchain [64] x x x ✓ ✓ Using SDN to add the efficient capability of handling a group of sub-flows together [65] x ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ using smart contract in IoT-SDN to provide security and privacy [66] ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Cyber Threat Intelligence sharing platform based on a private blockchain [67] x x ✓ ✓ x secure IoT-SDN-NFV architecture based on the blockchain [68] x ✓ ✓ ✓ x Using blockchain for identification and sharing the public key in IoT-SDN [69] x ✓ ✓ ✓ x resource limitation aware approach for authentication in IoT-SDN [70] x ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ record the transaction in blockchain in IoT-SDN [71] x x x ✓ ✓ energy aware and distributed approach based on the blockchain to increase the security and privacy [72] ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ using blockchain to make redundancy and increase the level of security and privacy…”

“…Some novel approach has been presented in[62]-[64] for using SDN in blockchain for filtering the packets, NS amplification attack in the private Blockchain, and adding the efficient capability of handling a group of sub-flows together. The proposed approach in[65], has used smart contracts to improve the security and privacy of SDN-based IoT. The authors have used a public blockchain using Ethereum.…”

Personal health record storage and sharing using searchable encryption and blockchain: A comprehensive survey

“…Following that, researchers started exploring the applications of blockchain in other areas. In recent years, blockchain has found application in many areas, such as healthcare applications, 2-7 crowd sourcing system, 8 industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), 9 Internet of Drones (IoD), [10][11][12][13][14] Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled smart agriculture, [15][16][17] Internet of Vehicles (IoV) and Vehicular Adhoc Network (VANET), [18][19][20][21] Software-Defined Network (SDN), 22,23 Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), 24,25 Internet of Everything (IoE), 26 smart-grid system, 27 supply chains, 28 Cognitive Internet of Things (CIoT), [29][30][31] and so on. The various applications of the blockchain technology are also illustrated in Figure 1.…”

A blockchain-based secure data-sharing framework for Software Defined Wireless Body Area Networks

“…To bridge this gap, a blockchain-based secure data sharing framework needs to be designed. Researchers from both industry and academia proposed several data sharing frameworks for SDNs [4,5,6,7,8,9]. However, there are several limitations in those proposed systems such as follows: i) Scalability-Most of the frameworks are designed to share data only within the organization or a certain location and thus, are not scalable beyond the boundary [5,8]; ii) Access control-Most of the solutions focus on authenticity, confidentiality and integrity of the systems [4,5,6] whereas permitting or restricting access to the information (authorization) based on the type of users and their roles is also critical for secure data communication; iii) Application specific-The frameworks are designed either to defend against particular attacks [5,9] or to facilitate data sharing for a particular group of entities (e.g.…”

“…Researchers from both industry and academia proposed several data sharing frameworks for SDNs [4,5,6,7,8,9]. However, there are several limitations in those proposed systems such as follows: i) Scalability-Most of the frameworks are designed to share data only within the organization or a certain location and thus, are not scalable beyond the boundary [5,8]; ii) Access control-Most of the solutions focus on authenticity, confidentiality and integrity of the systems [4,5,6] whereas permitting or restricting access to the information (authorization) based on the type of users and their roles is also critical for secure data communication; iii) Application specific-The frameworks are designed either to defend against particular attacks [5,9] or to facilitate data sharing for a particular group of entities (e.g. researchers) [7] and thus, failed to a provide a holistic solution for data sharing among different entities such as patients, health professionals, researchers and health insurers; iv) Formal Security Analysis-Most of the papers provide an informal security analysis [6,8], however, it is important to formally analyze the protocols to discover flaws that failed to be detected by informal approaches.…”