Preserving flow table integrity in OpenFlow networks through smart contract

Abstract

Abstract SDN revolutionises network management by providing a centralised controller that enables flexible and effortless configuration of networks. However, this flexibility also leads to a vulnerability that enables the adversary to trick the security system into allowing the installation of unauthorised flow rules in the switches. Blockchain provides us with a way to protect against malicious tampering with flow rules by storing them in the distributed ledger. In this work, we propose FTISCON, a mechanism to preserve the integrity of the OpenFlow flow table that utilizes blockchain technology. We employ the Ethereum Private Blockchain to implement the proof-of-concept and conduct a comparative analysis of the proposed scheme and existing related schemes, evaluating their performance in terms of delay, computation time, transaction cost, and detection rate. The proposed work is found to perform better in each of these. The study results suggest that the proposed approach offers a practical and efficient remedy to prevent flow modification attacks within SDN networks.