Software-Defined Networking: An Evolving Network Architecture—Programmability and Security Perspective

Table 2

SDN attack analysis focusing on each level.

SDN architecture	Attacks vectors on each level of the SDN architecture
Data plane	⁃ The data flow within the network could be forged and redirected; ⁃ Manipulating session maintenance between the devices
Control plane	⁃ SDN services could be denied to the network causing a denial of service/distributed denial of service; ⁃ Compromised network topology information; ⁃ The network could be manipulated because of its centralized and distributed controller attributes
Application plane	⁃ Legitimate applications could be compromised and manipulated; ⁃ Misconfigurations within the legitimate applications
Combination of all planes	⁃ Majority of the attacks could be initiated using compromised trusted networks causing distributed denial of service; ⁃ Sniffing the packets to gain network information
Interfaces	⁃ Exploiting the application programming interface