Authentic and Confidential Policy Distribution in
Software Defined Wireless Network
Huaqun Wang
Dalian Ocean University, Dalian, Liaoning, P.R.China, 116023
E-mail: wanghuaqun@aliyun.com
Abstract—Software-defined networking (SDN) empowers net-
work operators with more flexibility to program their networks.
By separating the complexity of state distribution from network
specification, SDN provides new ways to deal with age-old prob-
lems in networking, for example, routing. At the same time, SDN
also brings about some new security problems, such as forged
traffic flow, vulnerability, etc. In wireless SDN, the controller will
send some policies to the switches. It is very important to remain
these policies authentic and confidential due to the wireless and
insecure channel. In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient
policy distribution scheme in wireless SDN which can realize
authentication and secrecy simultaneously. The proposed scheme
takes use of the symmetric encryption/decryption algorithms,
bilinear pairings and multi-linear map. Through security analysis
and efficiency analysis, our scheme is provably secure and efficient
in the random oracle model (ROM).
Keywords—SDN, Policy distribution, Multi-linear map, Authen-
tication, Secrecy
I. INTRODUCTION
Internet was designed for maximum redundancy and flex-
ibility. In internet, even if the forwarding packets are given
a destination, no restriction on the path that they reach that
destination. Although the routing is not entirely arbitrary where
IP will favour an efficient pathway, heavy traffic, router outages
and line breaks can all impact the actual route taken. Even if
the start and end point are in the same country, you cannot
be certain that the data might not cross and re-cross national
borders somewhere along the way. In terms of legislative
compliance, it could bring about serious problem. How to solve
this problem without a massive rebuild of the global network
infrastructure to ensure that every point where data lines cross
national borders? SDN provides a novel solution to the above
problem. Because of these good properties, many scientists
start to study its architecture and security [1–3].
SDN is a new networking architecture. By using SDN, ap-
plication programming interfaces (APIs) can be standardized in
order to help network programmers define and reconfigure the
way data or resources are handled within a network. Taking use
of APIs, some network applications can be easily interface and
reconfigure the network and its components (such as switches,
etc.) based on their particular requirements. SDN has garnered
significant attention from major players in the virtualization
and cloud computing space, another burgeoning segment of the
computing world. SDN can be defined as a three-tiered “stack”
architecture. The applications and high-level instructions sit in
the top tier, a controller sits in the middle directing data traffic,
and a third tier resides at the bottom, containing physical
Fig. 1. SDN Architecture
network and switches. SDN architecture can be shown in
Figure 1.
In wireless SDN, security and efficiency face many chal-
lenges due to the wireless communication. If SDN is properly
designed and deployed, this new network environment will
definitely present a quantum leap in network architecting, not
only in functionality but also in resilience. The seven main
potential threat vectors are given below [3]. (1) Forged or
faked traffic flows, which can be used to attack switches and
controllers. (2) Attacks on vulnerabilities in switches, which
can easily wreak havoc with the network. (3) Attacks on
control plane communications, which can be used to generate
DoS attacks or for data theft. (4) Attacks on and vulnerabilities
in controllers, which are probably the most severe threats
to SDNs. (5) Lack of mechanisms to ensure trust between
the controller and management applications. (6) Attacks on
and vulnerabilities in administrative stations which, as it is
also common in traditional networks, are used in SDNs to
access the network controller. (7) Lack of trusted resources for
forensics and remediation, which would allow to understand
the cause of a detected problem and proceed to a fast and
secure mode recovery.
For the forged or faked traffic flow, an attacker launches
a DoS attack against OpenFlow switches and controller re-
978-1-4799-0959-9/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 1167