HPC networks and campus networks are beginning to leverage various levels of network programmability ranging from programmable network configuration (e.g., NETCONF/YANG, SNMP, OF-CONFIG) to software-based controllers (e.g., OpenFlow Controllers) to dynamic function placement via network function virtualization (NFV). While programmable networks offer new capabilities, they also make the network more difficult to debug. When applications experience unexpected network behavior, there is no established method to investigate the cause in a programmable network and many of the conventional troubleshooting debugging tools (e.g., ping and traceroute) can turn out to be completely useless. This absence of troubleshooting tools that support programmability ismore »
Enabling Dynamic Network Access Control with Anomaly-based IDS and SDN
In the Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) era, it is critical to enable dynamic network access control. Traditionally, network access control policies are statically predefined as router entries or firewall rules. SDN enables more flexibility by re-actively installing flow rules into the switches to achieve dynamic network access control. However, SDN is limited in capturing network anomalies, which are usually important signs of security threats. In this paper, we propose to employ anomaly-based Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to capture network anomalies and generate SDN flow rules to enable dynamic network access control. We gain the knowledge of network anomalies from anomaly-based IDS by training an interpretable model to explain its outcome. Based on the explanation, we derive access control policies. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by explaining the outcome of an anomaly-based IDS built upon a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and generating SDN flow rules based on our explanation.
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10109941
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Workshop on Security in Software Defined Networks & Network Function Virtualization
- Page Range or eLocation-ID:
- 13 to 16
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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