Utilizing NFV for more effective moving target defense against link flooding reconnaissance attacks

Abstract

Moving target defense (MTD) is becoming popular with the advancements in Software Defined Networking (SDN) technologies. With centralized management through SDN, changing the network attributes such as routes to escape from attacks is simple and fast. Yet, the available alternate routes are bounded by the network topology, and a persistent attacker that continuously perform the reconnaissance can extract the whole link-map of the network. To address this issue, we propose to use virtual shadow networks (VSNs) by applying Network Function Virtualization (NFV) abilities to the network in order to deceive attacker with the fake topology information and not reveal the actual network topology and characteristics. We design this approach under a formal framework for Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks and apply it to the recently emerged indirect DDoS attacks, namely Crossfire, for evaluation. The results show that attacker spends more time to figure out the network behavior while the costs on the defender and network operations are negligible until reaching a certain network size.