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Footprints: Ensuring Trusted Service Function Chaining in the World of SDN and NFV

  • Montida Pattaranantakul*
  • , Qipeng Song
  • , Yanmei Tian
  • , Licheng Wang
  • , Zonghua Zhang
  • , Ahmed Meddahi
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and Software Defined Networking (SDN) empower Service Function Chaining (SFC), which integrates an ordered list of Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) together for implementing a particular service. However, the high-level SFC policy specification cannot guarantee that the VNFs are always chained in an expected manner (or the packet flows of the service are forwarded to the VNFs of concern in a predefined order). An attacker can manage to bypass or evade the security VNFs (e.g., firewall, virus scanner, DPI) and deviate the packets flows from the pre-specified path. It is thus a significant need to have an efficient self-checking mechanism in place, ensuring the SFC to be implemented in a secure and correct way. We develop such a scheme based on an improved crypto primitive, Lite identity-based ordered multisignature, which enforces all the VNFs in the same service chain to sequentially sign the packets received. Then the last hop of the chain will verify the aggregate signature, so as to validate the authenticity of the VNFs, as well as their orders in the chain. We leverage the IETF Network Service Header (NSH) to implement our scheme and run the experiments in a real-world environment to evaluate its performance in terms of computational overhead and latency.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSecurity and Privacy in Communication Networks - 15th EAI International Conference, SecureComm 2019, Proceedings
EditorsSongqing Chen, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Xinwen Fu, Wenjing Lou, Aziz Mohaisen
PublisherSpringer
Pages287-301
Number of pages15
ISBN (Print)9783030372309
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019
Externally publishedYes
Event15th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2019 - Orlando , United States
Duration: 23 Oct 201925 Oct 2019

Publication series

NameLecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, LNICST
Volume305 LNICST
ISSN (Print)1867-8211

Conference

Conference15th International Conference on Security and Privacy in Communication Networks, SecureComm 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityOrlando
Period23/10/1925/10/19

Keywords

  • Aggregate signature
  • NFV
  • Pairings
  • SDN
  • SFC

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