A Security Architecture Against Service Function Chaining Threats
draft-nguyen-sfc-security-architecture-00
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Network Working Group CT. NGUYEN
Internet-Draft M. Park
Intended status: Informational Soongsil University
Expires: May 27, 2020 November 24, 2019
A Security Architecture Against Service Function Chaining Threats
draft-nguyen-sfc-security-architecture-00
Abstract
Service Function Chaining (SFC) provides a special capability that
defines an ordered list of network services as a virtual chain and
makes a network more flexible and manageable. However, SFC is
vulnerable to various attacks caused by compromised switches,
especially the middlebox-bypass attack. In this document, we propose
a security architecture that can detect not only middlebox-bypass
attacks but also other incorrect forwarding actions by compromised
switches. The existing solutions to protect SFC against compromised
switches and middlebox-bypass attacks can only solve individual
problems. The proposed architecture uses both probe-based and
statistics-based methods to check the probe packets with random pre-
assigned keys and collect statistics from middleboxes for detecting
any abnormal actions in SFC.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on May 27, 2020.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
NGUYEN & Park Expires May 27, 2020 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Detecting_Compromised_Switches November 2019
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Compromised Switches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Architecture Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.1. Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2. Proposed Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.3. Probe Packet Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.4. Statistics Checking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1. Introduction
In recent years, Service Function Chaining (SFC) has emerged with the
robust development of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network
Function Virtualization (NFV). SFC defines ordered virtual chains of
service functions (e.g., firewalls, load balancing, network address
translation, etc.) and steers the network traffic through them, which
brings many benefits from virtualized software-defined
infrastructure. Service functions are provided by specialized
network entities called middleboxes. One middlebox is commonly
connected to a switch, and SFC connects switches to make a chain with
the required services. Middleboxes are responsible for processing
packet and forwarding packet to the attached switches in the service
chain.
However, there are some security vulnerabilities for packets traverse
in SFC, especially with compromised switches. A special attack
called "middlebox-bypass attack" was proposed, which happens when
compromised switches forward packets to the next-hop middlebox in the
SFC without sending them to its attached middlebox. This means that
packets are not processed by all service functions inside
middleboxes, which does not meet the original goal of SFC.
Attackers, therefore, can bypass some important service functions,
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