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Security Level: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements www.huawei.com HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD. Author/ Email: Artur Hecker / [email protected] Version: V1.0(20131105)
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Page 1: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Security Level:

Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements

www.huawei.com

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.

Author/ Email: Artur Hecker / [email protected]

Version: V1.0(20131105)

Page 2: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Scope of this talk

This talk

Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators)

With an explicit focus on SDN

SotA, security, resilience

Tries to give some outlook

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD. Page 2Huawei proprietary. No spread without permission.

This talk is not about…

Cloud security at large

Whether it’s wise or not store your files in the US, Myanmar, etc.

– But do look at PIRS, ORAM, encrypted search and fully homomorphic encryption

Legal and national considerations, certification and normalization

– Safe Harbor, PRISM, etc.

Page 3: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

About the author/presenter

Senior Researcher at Huawei’s European Research Centre (ERC)

Working in the Future Carrier Networks (FCN) research team

In Munich, Germany

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Page 4: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

The Competence Centers in ERC

Germany (Munich, Nuremberg)

Antenna Technology

Base Software Platform

Future Network Technologies

Hardware and Engineering Technology

Belgium (Brussels)Application Software Architecture

France (Paris, Nice)

UK (Ipswich)Optoelectronics

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD. Page 4Huawei proprietary. No spread without permission.

Media Technology

Optical Technology

Energy Technology

Italy (Milan)

Microwave Technology

Optoelectronics Packaging

France (Paris, Nice)Wireless Standard

Graphic Chip Design

5 Countries; 7 Offices; More than 410 staff; More than 75% is local

Page 5: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Apr 2010

Jun 2011

Total people reaches 350

Total People reaches 550

Jan 2012 Establishment of UK Branch

Sept 2011 Establishment of Nuremberg Branch

Dec 2012 Establishment of Finland and Ireland branches

Total People exceeds 750+Jan 2013

Total R&D InvestmentsCAGR: 24%

20082009

2010

2012

137M€114M€

71M€

2011

Huawei Research in Europe: milestones

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD. Page 5Huawei proprietary. No spread without permission.

Establishment in Stockholm2000

Dec 2007

Apr 2010

Apr 2009

Mar 2009

Dec 2008

Total People in Sweden 50+

Establishment of Bonn CentreMar 2008

Jun 2008 Establishment of Milan Branch

Major Movement from Bonn to Munich

Establishment of Gothenburg branch

Establishment of Belgium Branch

Total people reaches 350

Collaboration InvestmentsCAGR: 40%

20122010

2009200820072006

14M€

12M€

6M€

2011

Page 6: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Carriers and Clouds

Carriers interested in Clouds in general

Would like to use existing Cloud Offerings

Example: use cloud storage to outsource legal long-term storage (data

retention: connection logs, billing data, DNS data)

Example: complement your infrastructure with a leased line, elastically

increase the capacity of your service platform, etc.

Would like to use Cloud Technologies themselves

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Would like to use Cloud Technologies themselves

Migrate service platforms to DCs

Use more flexible network functions on COTS hardware ( ETSI NFV)

Fully programmable network, carrier network as a Full SDN

– Carrier infrastructure as interconnected DCs, resource orchestration

Would like to propose Cloud Services (XaaS)

B2B: dynamically lease parts of your infrastructure

B2C: storage, computing, private network extensions, apps (mail, gaming, …)

Page 7: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Carriers and Cloud Technologies

Carrier Cloud: Carrier Network as an SDN

… is a class of cloud that integrates wide area networks (WAN) and other

attributes of communications service providers’ carrier grade networks to

enable the deployment of highly demanding applications in the cloud.

(Wikipedia)

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Look in the future – SDN API at UNI?

Resolve the application blindness!

Concrete problems: a popular mobile app can clog the network

Page 8: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

NFV: Telco Operators want to lower TCO by running network functions on general purpose HW

SGSN

BRAS

IMS

MME

RNC

ASAS

Carrier and Cloud Technologies

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Data Center

Data Center

Edge Data Center

Edge Data Center

Data Center

Page 9: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Carrier Grade SDN: requirements (*)

Deployment paths, integration in the existing infrastructures

Legacy device support, hybrid operation modes

Scalability

Large-scale networks: thousands of devices, multiple controllers, …

Service Level Agreements

Quality of Service support, high availability

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Quality of Service support, high availability

Manageability (=OAMP)

Reliability, security, resilience

Operations under faults, failures, misconfigurations

Security of data and security of the overall system

Resilience against maliciously planned attacks

(*) Cmp NTT, EU FP7 SPARC

Page 10: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

CG-SDN:

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Reliability-Resilience-Security

Page 11: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Reliable, resilient, secure

Reliable

How good does it work under known/random faults?

Security

How can one maliciously abuse an SDN?

Resilience

Ability to operate under load, failures and attacks

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Ability to operate under load, failures and attacks

Reliable

SecureResilient

Page 12: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Reliability and Resilience:different methodologies

Reliability = service thinking

“Make it work” attitude

Methodology

Requirement engineering

Formal methods (model driven design, model checking)

– Allows for proofs under specific failure models

Implementation: per entity and structural redundancy

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Implementation: per entity and structural redundancy

Resilience requires security thinking

Experience-based: from laissez-faire to paranoia

Depends on the deployed base and context/environment

Methodology

Asset, value => high level risks

Context, usage => usage, fault and attack models

Concrete implementation => vulnerabilities

Implementation: protection/detection/reaction, Denning cycle (PDCA)

Page 13: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

SDN today

Mainly driven through ONF’s OpenFlow

So far used as a new enabler technology in computer networks

LAN/MAN: academic environments, enterprise networks

Increasingly also in Data Centers (DC) – part of Cloud Technology

A very active area of research and development

Compare recent developments in the research community

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Compare recent developments in the research community

Several open source controller projects

Several vendors active

Expected interesting outcomes

Network programming: network languages & compilers, static analysis

How to bring that emerging know-how to Carriers?

Page 14: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Current SDN Model with OpenFlow

Controller API (e.g. RESTful API)“Controller North interface”

QoS Sec SPF App1 App2 AppN

Topology

L3Control Applications

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OpenFlow Controller

Network Elements(Switches, Routers, etc)

OpenFlow

“Controller North interface”

FIB/RIB

Topology

“Controller South interface”

“OF Request”

New Flow

Lookup

Flow rule

“OF Reply”

L1

L2

Page 15: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Novelty and contribution of SDN/OF (*)

Usually identified with control and forwarding plane separation

Split architecture, etc.

Yet, this is hardly new!

Telco networks have been doing this for decades

SDN = fuse control and management and centralize both

SDN makes both control and management data centrally available

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SDN makes both control and management data centrally available

Achieves consistency

Which in turn allows for full network programmability

Event-based, close to real time cross-layer control

But what about the CAP theorem?

Which two of {Consistency, Availability, Partition Tolerance} do we need?

Carriers: {Availability, Partition Tolerance} – this contradicts SDN!

Need for research and prudent Engineering(*) Cmp Y. Stein, IRTF SDN list

Page 16: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

SDN: value and high level risks

SDN main promise: full network programmability

Network OS, network compilers, network-wide schedulers

E.g. promising: Frenetic language project

– Supports implementation-agnostic specifications of network behaviour

– Supports verifications and proofs (loop-freeness, etc)

– Supports consistent updates

Programmability+complexity => error-proneness, vulnerability

Openness of APIs

Difficult verification of program correctness (offline)

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Difficult verification of program correctness (offline)

Cyclomatic complexity of apps as a measure of complexity

Very difficult enforcement of benign execution (online)

Definition of “benign” is not absolute

+Complexity of the physical graphs (network topology)

Motivation for attackers

Interesting target: obtain full network control

Example: “rootnet” or black hole networking

Get your own, isolated, difficult to detect network

Page 17: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

CG-SDN: deployment and usage

Can one deploy an SDN today?

Switches are available on the market

Hybrid, native

Quality parameters:

– Size of the flow table (size of TCAM = expensive memory)

– Flow setup throughput (how many flow rules can be setup per second)

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Controllers are available both on the market and open source

NOX, Beacon, FloodLight, some others

Quality parameters, today:

– Flow setup latency (how much does it take for lookup and response)

– Flow throughput (how many requests per second can be served)

Which are possible deployment models?

What are central questions for a carrier in practice?

Page 18: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Current OF deployments (1/4) *

Native OpenFlow

Dumb switches, all control plane messages handled by the SDN controller

Problems

Deployment: Switches require IP connectivity to the controller:

Out of band (similar to Juniper’s Qfabric, too expensive)

In band: to isolate from errors, this would need a VLAN (e.g. VLAN#1). Besides,

switches would need to run STP (at least within VLAN#1)

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switches would need to run STP (at least within VLAN#1)

Load on the controller, scalability

Resilience - error recovery

Fast Control Loops are hard to implement with a single central controller

E.g. cmp BFD, RFC5880, see Resilience in FP7 SPARC deliverables

Reality check (e.g. NEC)

Max. ~50 switches per CTRL

200msec rerouting around failed links (depends on network size)

(*) Compare I. Pepelnjak’s essay, http://blog.ipspace.net/2011/11/openflow-deployment-models.html

Page 19: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Current OF deployments (2/4)

Native OpenFlow with Extensions

Controller gives more general statements to switches

Switches perform some control-plane functions stand-alone

E.g. LLDP, LACP, link aggregation, balancing across multiple links

Problems

Compliance: hardware capabilities and extensions to OpenFlow

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Compliance: hardware capabilities and extensions to OpenFlow

Complexity: requires capability discovery extensions, etc.

Reality check

Nicira used extended OF 1.1 with generic pattern matching, IPv6, load

balancing

OpenFlow 1.1 supports multipathing, but it is rarely implemented in HW

Page 20: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Current OF deployments (3/4)

OpenFlow-enabled classic networks

Switches have traditional control planes and run tedious periodic tasks

LACP, LLDP, BFD; only final state is reported to OF CTRL

OF Controller only manages certain ports, VLANs or subnets, etc.

Controller-Switch traffic uses a non-OF-controlled part

Problems

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Problems

Deployment: Not a holistic solution. How to manage the rest?

Programmability: some things are done by switches

Reality-check

Often used in academic and testing environments

OF is running in parallel to a production network

Not applicable to a CG-SDN full deployment

Page 21: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Current OF deployment (4/4)

Integrated OpenFlow

OpenFlow as a complementary, additional interface to the network

Controller-submitted entries go into usual provisions, e.g. in RIBs, LIBs, etc.

OpenFlow is “just another” interface, parallel to e.g. BGP-TE, ALTO and

PCE

Problems

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Problems

Unclean Architecture

Integration: Hard to achieve inter-working at higher abstraction layers

Security: more open interfaces, need to control/enforce policy over all that

Reality Check

Provides a straightforward deployment path

No need to develop control apps to re-do what’s already working

Page 22: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

CG-SDN: Controller vs controlled

Reality

Extremes do not work

Beyond architectural debates

A tradeoff between a FullSDN

(ideal) and network

performance

Full SDN

Link preservation in switches(BFD, LLDP, LACP, etc.)

HyperFlow(Distributed synced cntrls)

Design Space

Topology construction, VLAN(802.1q, RSTP, etc)

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performance

What about transition path?

Native vs. integrated

What impact of hybrid switches?

Traditional Network

DevoFlow, DIFANE(Fine-grained control to switches)

OF as another mgmt iface

(Distributed synced cntrls)

Page 23: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

CG-SDN: improve control plane perf

1. Optimize controller placement to reduce propagation delay

Not treated here. But see HotSDN 2012, “Controller Placement Problem”.

2. Add controllers in order to distribute flow processing

See HyperFlow or P2P controllers, see Seattle

Elastic controllers, controllers in the cloud, etc.

See HotSDN 2013, “Elastic controllers”.

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See HotSDN 2013, “Elastic controllers”.

3. Change operation modus from strictly reactive to strictly

proactive in order to reduce number of/avoid requests

Cmp. VMWare/Nicira (NVP)

Leads to a (partial) loss of reactivity / consistency

4. Distinguish edge and core switches to reduce flow state

See HotSDN 2012, “Fabric: a Retrospective on Evolving SDN”

Full visibility

Blind operation

Proactive

Reactive

Page 24: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

CG-SDN: Edge – Core Separation

Telco: huge differences between the edge and the core

Core: few connections, few large pipes, best effort, critical

Edge: capillar network, plethora of narrow pipes, access/admission

Problem

Generalized per-flow state does not scale

And is hardly necessary

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And is hardly necessary

Only few alternative paths available in the core

Classical solution here

Forwarding abstraction classes

== forwarding abstraction, MPLS fwd classes

Page 25: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Conclusions: OF for CG-SDN

Some of current deployment models unsuitable for Carriers

Model 1: unrealistic, Model 2: non-standard extensions; Model 3: not an

infrastructure control, too partial

Some intelligence will remain in switches

In any model; but especially in Model 4.

Required by installation needs, migration and resilience/recovery

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Required by installation needs, migration and resilience/recovery

What is the right distribution for which carrier?

Results in

Complexity: capability discovery needed if support in switches/controllers differs

Limited Programmability: whatever goes to switches, goes against the SDN idea

Scalability: several controllers will need to exist

For performance reasons, cmp. NTT requirements, HyperFlow, Onix

Different OF bases will handle access, backhaul, core, wireless/wired, etc.

Page 26: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

State of the Art: Reliability

Protections for specific fault models, e.g.

Controller failure

Link or port or switch failure

Reliability mechanisms

Typically based on protection and restoration

Protection: pre-calculate alternative paths + install redundant controllers

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Protection: pre-calculate alternative paths + install redundant controllers

– Failover controllers supported by the OpenFlow standard since early versions

– Degraded mode supported for switches that lose controller connections

Restore the communication on error

– Detect and report error (e.g. local BFD module in switches)

– Controller loads the new path into the switch

Policy and state verification

Formal verifications: policy compilers detect and resolve conflicts

– Formal languages (e.g. Frenetic)

Page 27: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

State of the Art: Switch vulnerabilities

What happens if an attacker takes over one of the switches?

How?

Frayed management interfaces

Complexity, complex verifications, possible race conditions

Difficulty of personalization, initial configuration, key management

Hardware theft

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Hardware theft

Impact

Rogue switches could alter OF rules: mismatch between controller view

and real world

Rogue switches could produce OF-relevant events

Page 28: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

State of the Art: Security of OF (1/2)

Normally, switch to controller traffic is protected by TLS

Authenticated channels from switches to controllers

Authenticated channels for data replication between controllers

OF TLS Support

Optional since official versions of OpenFlow

Only few models on the market that fully support it

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Only few models on the market that fully support it

Switches: only NEC IP8800 according to HotSDN 2013 paper

Controllers: Open vSwitch

Some controllers support TLS connections but do not verify anything (call

it opportunistic encryption if you want)

Difficult to activate and configure correctly

Page 29: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

State of the Art: Security of OF (2/2)

Reactive controllers are more exposed than proactive

Some messages are more “dangerous” than the others

Packet In messages

Flow mod messages

OF 1.3 spec suggests switch->ctrl packet policing

Possible policing: filtering, rate limiting, priority handling, redirects,

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Possible policing: filtering, rate limiting, priority handling, redirects,

duplications, etc.

But how?

What about all the usual network security things?

ARP filters, broadcast and multicast limits, DHCP snooping prevention,

STP filtering on ports – who will implement them?

Page 30: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Example: OF network fingerprinting

Fingerprinting - SDN scanner

Exploits the difference in timings of new flow and existing flow

Samples the network by sending a lot of different flows consisting of two

packets

In SDN: the first packet would represent a new flow, the 2nd an existing flow.

The response delay would be different.

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The response delay would be different.

Without SDN: there should be no substantial difference but noise.

Makes simple statistical testing of the sample sets.

Page 31: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Security State of the Art, briefly

How can one attack SDN – identified attack vectors

Until now not different from any management platform (cmp. SNMP)

A0: Attack the OF traffic

Vectors: TLS config and implementation weaknesses, TLS environment abuse (trust)

Impact: credential extraction, snooping and injections, useful for multi-stage intrusions

A1: Get a switch and send rogue messages to controllers

Vectors: ID usurpation, existing switch vulnerabilities, weak authentication

Potential impact: full to partial network breakdown

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Potential impact: full to partial network breakdown

A2: Attack the controller and own the network

Vectors: DDoS (produce rogue flows, rogue OF reqs), ctrl vulnerabilities, weak

authentication

Potential impact: from DoS to full network control

A3: Attack the management platform

Vectors: weak admin auth, access to controller, controller vulnerability

Impact: full to partial network control

Page 32: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

OF Security/Resilience: Conclusions

The research has only started in the community

Hardly any interesting results so far

Typical (often implicit) assumptions

One fault at a time

Limited ecosystem

Control path always works

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Control path always works

Controller state is valid/converged

Recent work claims support for Byzantine fault models

See new results from HotSDN 2013.

But: Do these correspond to the carrier usage of OpenFlow ?

What are carrier reality, the ecosystem/environment, the future?

Page 33: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Imaginary SDN Environment

Physically separate control plane

Unique, closed, non-extensible controller

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OpenFlow ProtocolControl plane

Network Elements (Switches, Routers, etc)

Data Plane

OpenFlow Controller CtrlApps

Page 34: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Current SDN Environment

Control path leads, in big parts, over the controlled data plane

Several independent, closed controllers

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Network Elements (Switches, Routers, etc)

OpenFlow Protocol

Data Plane

1-n OpenFlow Controllers

Page 35: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Current situation: new problems

How to ensure synchronized state of controllers?

“Split brain problem”

See Onix, HyperFlow for some proposals

Are these secure? Are they resilient?

Protocols to achieve that, traffic to be preserved, failures to be avoided

How to virtually isolate control plane from data plane?

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How to virtually isolate control plane from data plane?

How to reach elements behind a failed element?

How to make sure that no command sequence…

… Leads to a self-lockout?

… Leads to unexpected behaviour? (race conditions betweens control apps)

Page 36: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

CG-SDN ecosystem

Several multi-protocol controllers rule infrastructure elements

Controlled and controlling entities are mixed in the data plane

Extensible controllers

Open API to control applications

3rd Party Control Apps AppStore?

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Resources (Switches, Routers, Hosts with Hypervisors, etc)

OpenFlow ProtocolOther protocols

Data Plane

1-n Controllers

Page 37: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

SDN: the control applications

Can these be generally trusted?

Developed by third parties

Not the controller vendor

Not the local admin

Approaches:

FlowVisor: prevent cross-slice attacks. How to prevent intra-slice attacks?

FortNOX, FRESCO: detect rule conflicts violating security policies

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FortNOX, FRESCO: detect rule conflicts violating security policies

Two models

Benign but buggy

Malicious

Isolation of apps

Controller is more important and should detain the rights

Control path should be isolated from apps as well

Control external app communications

Page 38: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

CG-SDN ecosystem – new problems

How to ensure that an app behaves correctly?

How to vet apps in the AppStore?

Flexible control plane:

How to dynamically deploy additional controllers?

Where to provision control paths?

How to intelligently orchestrate entities? (where when which one)

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How to intelligently orchestrate entities? (where when which one)

Joint path/node optimization, see FARO

Page 39: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Sec SDN: the control applications

Can these be generally trusted?

Developed by third parties

Not the controller vendor

Not the local admin

Two potential models

Benign but buggy

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Malicious

Approaches:

FlowVisor: prevent cross-slice attacks. How to prevent intra-slice attacks?

FortNOX, FRESCO: detect rule conflicts violating security policies

Secure Controller Platform - Isolation of apps

Controller is more important and should detain the rights

Control path should be isolated from apps as well

Control external app communications

Page 40: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Future possible CG-SDN

Network API enables development of network aware apps

Towards explicit exchanges with a programmable network

From the pipe to semantic networking, support for innovative services

– Criticality, locality of treatment, extreme QoS constraints

3rd Party Control Apps AppStoreNetwork API

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1-n Controllers

Resources (Switches, Routers, Hosts with Hypervisors, etc)

OpenFlow ProtocolOther protocols

Data Plane

Users

User apps

Page 41: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Network API

How to identify and authorize user apps?

How to verify their origin, correctness, etc.

What are the necessary, recommended, advisable limitations on

the Network API?

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Others: ForCES, PCE,

Towards full CG-SDN

Control Applications API

RESTful, XML, WS“Controller North interface”

QoS Sec SPF App1 AppNUser-API

From OF

CTRL API + Access/Behavior Control

Topology

AppSecurity

Shared Infrastructure View

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Others: ForCES, PCE,BGP-TE, I2RS, …

Others: ForCES, PCE,BGP-TE, I2RS, …Controllers

Network (Switches, Routers, Hosts with Hypervisors, etc)

OpenFlow

Mgmt(NETCONF)

NETCONF

FIB/RIB

Others: ForCES, PCE,BGP-TE, I2RS, …

Others

“Controller South interface”

From OFto SDNCTRL

(see OpenDayLight)

Resilience

Proxy

Discovery, failure detection, control traffic preservation, etc

+Extensions

Logical Network (Comm Stacks, Services)

Functions

TopologyShared Infrastructure View

Page 43: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

Conclusions

Deployment of OpenFlow very limited until now

Only academic attacks so far

Bad guys have had no incentives to look into it so far

A real CG-SDN will be considerably more complex

Several controllers sharing states

Complex switches with autonomous capabilities

Open control application interface, mix of different applications

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Resulting in a mix of control apps from unclear sources

Research has only started on these matters

The findings already are worrisome

Yet, most attacks are not even characteristic to SDN!

SDN: General programmability = major vulnerability

The very feature bears the main risk

What will happen when thousands of programmable entities will be waiting in a large-

scale environment for close-to-realtime programmatic control by other virtual entities?

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Thank youwww.huawei.com

Copyright©2011 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved.The information in this document may contain predictive statements including, without limitation,statements regarding the future financial and operating results, future product portfolio, new technology,etc. There are a number of factors that could cause actual results and developments to differ materiallyfrom those expressed or implied in the predictive statements. Therefore, such information is provided forreference purpose only and constitutes neither an offer nor an acceptance. Huawei may change theinformation at any time without notice.

Page 45: Carrier SDN: Security and Resilience Requirements Scope of this talk This talk Is about use of cloud technologies by carriers (=telcos, mobile operators) With an explicit focus on

References (1/2)

Google WAN SDN

Google, “Inter-Datacenter WAN with centralized TE using SDN and OpenFlow”, white paper.

U. Hoelzle, “OpenFlow @ Google”, Open Networking Summit, April 2012.

A. Vahdat, “A Software Defined WAN Architecture”, Open Networking Summit, April 2012.

Practical Take on OpenFlow

I. Pepelnjak’s blog, http://blog.ipspace.net/

Open Networking Foundation, https://www.opennetworking.org

OpenFlow Controllers

NOX, Open Source SDN Controller, http://www.noxrepo.org/

FloodLight, Open SDN Controller, http://floodlight.openflowhub.org/

Beacon, OpenFlow Controller in Java, https://openflow.stanford.edu/display/Beacon/Home

OpenDayLight, http://www.opendaylight.org/

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OpenDayLight, http://www.opendaylight.org/

Carrier Grade SDN

Research project FP7 SPARC, www.fp7-sparc.eu

D. Staessens et al., “Software Defined Networking: Meeting Carrier Grade Requirements”, LANMAN 2011.

Y. Ito, “Expectations for OpenFlow/SDN as Carrier’s Network”, Open Networking Summit, April 2012.

Programmability, verification

Frenetic Language Project, http://www.frenetic-lang.org

Nate Foster, Michael J. Freedman, Arjun Guha, Rob Harrison, Naga Praveen Katta, Christopher Monsanto, Joshua Reich, Mark Reitblatt, Jennifer Rexford,

Cole Schlesinger, Alec Story, and David Walker. Languages for software-defined networks. IEEE Communications Magazine, vol 51, issue 2, 2013.

Mark Reitblatt, Nate Foster, Jennifer Rexford, Cole Schlesinger, David Walker, “Abstractions for Network Update”, in proc. ACM SIGCOMM 2012, Helsinki,

Finland.

Arjun Guha, Mark Reitblatt, and Nate Foster. Machine-Verified Network Controllers. In ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and

Implementation (PLDI), Seattle, WA, June 2013.

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References (2/2)

Scalability of SDN

T. Koponen et al., “Onix: A Distributed Control Platform for Large-Scale Production Networks”, USENIX OSDI 2010.

A. Tootoonchian, Y. Ganjali, “HyperFlow: A Distributed Control Plane for OpenFlow”, INM/WREN’10 in conjunction with USENIX NSDI, April 2010.

Andrew R. Curtis, Jeffrey C. Mogul, Jean Tourrilhes, Praveen Yalagandula, Puneet Sharma, Sujata Banerjee, “DevoFlow: Scaling Flow Management for

High-Performance Networks”, in proc. ACM SIGCOMM 2011, Toronto, Canada.

M. Yu, J. Rexford, M. J. Freedman, J. Wang, „Scalable Flow-Based Networking with DIFANE“, ACM SIGCOMM 2010.

A. Voellmy, J. Wang, “Scalable Software Defined Network Controllers”, ACM SIGCOMM 2012 Poster.

S. H. Yeganeh, A. Tootoonchian, Y. Ganjali, “On Scalability of Software-Defined Networking”, IEEE Communications Magazine, vol 51, issue 2, 2013.

Soheil Hassas Yeganeh, Yashar Ganjali, “Kandoo: A Framework for Efficient and Scalable Offloading of Control Applications”, in proc. ACM HotSDN 2012,

Helsinki, Finland.

Reliability/Security/Resilience

L. MacVittie, Cyclomatic Complexity of OpenFlow-based SDN, DevCentral, f5.com

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD. Page 47Huawei proprietary. No spread without permission.

L. MacVittie, Cyclomatic Complexity of OpenFlow-based SDN, DevCentral, f5.com

A. Khurshid, W. Zhou, M. Caesar, P. Brighten Godfrey, “VeriFlow: Verifying Network-wide Invariants in Real Time”, ACM SIGCOMM 2010.

D. Kreutz, F. M.V. Ramos, P. Verissimo, „Towards Secure and Dependable Software-Defined Networks“, HotSDN 2013.

K. Benton, L. J. Camp, C. Small, “OpenFlow Vulnerability Assessment”, HotSDN 2013.

S. Shin, G. Gu, “Attacking Software Defined Networks: A first Feasibility Study”, HotSDN 2013.

X. Wen, Y. Chen, C. Hu, C. Shi, Y. Wang, “Towards a Secure Controller Platform for OpenFlow Applications”, HotSDN 2013.


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