EBCS-SDN: an enhanced blockchain-based framework for control plane security in multi-domain SDN.

Area of Science:

• Computer Science
• Network Security
• Distributed Systems

Background:

• Software Defined Networking (SDN) offers enhanced network programmability but faces scalability and security challenges in multi-domain environments.
• Centralized controllers in SDN are vulnerable to attacks, leading to compromised network integrity through injected false flow rules.
• Current security solutions lack real-time monitoring of controller integrity, relying on static authorizations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose an enhanced blockchain-based control layer security framework (EBCS-SDN) for multi-domain SDN.
• To address limitations in existing security solutions by introducing dynamic trust scoring and real-time monitoring.
• To ensure continuous controller accountability and network integrity in multi-domain SDN architectures.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of a dynamic trust scoring model for controllers.
• Development of an optimized dual-phase controller authentication mechanism.
• Integration of a decentralized behavioral-deviation hijack detection system.

Main Results:

• The EBCS-SDN framework demonstrated significant performance and security improvements over baseline models.
• Reduced controller authentication latency by up to 75% and achieved 96.78% hijack detection accuracy.
• Achieved post-attack throughput of 980 Mbps with detection/isolation under 1.2s, optimizing CPU utilization.

Conclusions:

• The proposed EBCS-SDN framework provides a scalable, computationally lightweight, and operationally resilient security foundation for multi-domain SDN.
• The framework enhances controller accountability and network integrity through dynamic trust and decentralized detection.
• Empirical evaluations confirm the superiority of EBCS-SDN in simulated multi-domain SDN environments.