Skip to main content

Revisiting Traffic Anomaly Detection Using Software Defined Networking

  • Conference paper

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 6961))

Abstract

Despite their exponential growth, home and small office/home office networks continue to be poorly managed. Consequently, security of hosts in most home networks is easily compromised and these hosts are in turn used for largescale malicious activities without the home users’ knowledge. We argue that the advent of Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides a unique opportunity to effectively detect and contain network security problems in home and home office networks. We show how four prominent traffic anomaly detection algorithms can be implemented in an SDN context using Openflow compliant switches and NOX as a controller. Our experiments indicate that these algorithms are significantly more accurate in identifying malicious activities in the home networks as compared to the ISP. Furthermore, the efficiency analysis of our SDN implementations on a programmable home network router indicates that the anomaly detectors can operate at line rates without introducing any performance penalties for the home network traffic.

This work is supported by Pakistan National ICT R&D Fund.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Acm sigcomm workshop on home networks (homenets), http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2010/HomeNets.php

  2. Arbor networks peakflow-x homepage, http://www.arbornetworks.com/en/peakflow-x.html

  3. Cisco anomaly guard module homepage, www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6235/

  4. Endace ninjabox homepage, http://www.endace.com/ninjabox.html

  5. Nox box, http://noxrepo.org/manual/noxbox.html

  6. Open vswitch, http://openvswitch.org/

  7. Openflow specification version 1.0.0, http://www.openflow.org/documents/openflow-spec-v1.0.0.pdf

  8. Openflow specification version 1.1.0, http://www.openflow.org/documents/openflow-spec-v1.1.0.pdf

  9. Pc engines alix 2c3 system board, http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2c3.htm

  10. Voyage linux, http://linux.voyage.hk/

  11. Anti-phishingworking group. phishing activity trends report, 4th quarter / 2009 (2010), http://www.antiphishing.org/reports/apwg_report_Q4_2009.pdf

  12. Ashfaq, A.B., Robert, M.J., Mumtaz, A., Ali, M.Q., Sajjad, A., Khayam, S.A.: A comparative evaluation of anomaly detectors under portscan attacks. In: Lippmann, R., Kirda, E., Trachtenberg, A. (eds.) RAID 2008. LNCS, vol. 5230, pp. 351–371. Springer, Heidelberg (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  13. Brauckhoff, D., Tellenbach, B., Wagner, A., May, M., Lakhina, A.: Impact of packet sampling on anomaly detection metrics. In: Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement, IMC 2006, pp. 159–164. ACM, New York (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Caesar, M., Caldwell, D., Feamster, N., Rexford, J., Shaikh, A., van der Merwe, J.: Design and implementation of a routing control platform. In: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Symposium on Networked Systems Design & Implementation, NSDI 2005, vol. 2, pp. 15–28. USENIX Association, Berkeley (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Calvert, K.L., Keith, W., Rebecca, E., Grinter, E.: Moving toward the middle: The case against the end-to-end argument. In: Home Networking. Sixth Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Casado, M., Freedman, M.J., Pettit, J., Luo, J., McKeown, N., Shenker, S.: Ethane: taking control of the enterprise. SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 37, 1–12 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Casado, M., Garfinkel, T., Akella, A., Freedman, M.J., Boneh, D., McKeown, N., Shenker, S.: Sane: a protection architecture for enterprise networks. In: Proceedings of the 15th Conference on USENIX Security Symposium, vol. 15. USENIX Association, Berkeley (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Dixon, C., Mahajan, R., Agarwal, S., Brush, A.J., Lee, B., Saroiu, S., Bahl, V.: The home needs an operating system (and an app store). In: Proceedings of the Ninth ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, Hotnets 2010, pp.18:1–18:6. ACM, New York (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Feamster, N.: Outsourcing home network security. In: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Home Networks, HomeNets 2010, pp. 37–42. ACM, New York (2010)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  20. Gu, Y., McCallum, A., Towsley, D.: Detecting anomalies in network traffic using maximum entropy estimation. In: Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement, IMC 2005, p. 32. USENIX Association, Berkeley (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Gude, N., Koponen, T., Pettit, J., Pfaff, B., Casado, M., McKeown, N., Shenker, S.: Nox: towards an operating system for networks. SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 38, 105–110 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Jung, J., Paxson, V., Berger, A.W., Balakrishnan, H.: Fast portscan detection using sequential hypothesis testing. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Kim, M.S., Kong, H.J., Hong, S.C., Chung, S.H., Hong, J.: A flow-based method for abnormal network traffic detection. In: IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium, NOMS 2004, vol. 1, pp. 599–612 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Koponen, T., Casado, M., Gude, N., Stribling, J., Poutievski, L., Zhu, M., Ramanathan, R., Iwata, Y., Inoue, H., Hama, T., Shenker, S.: Onix: a distributed control platform for large-scale production networks. In: Proceedings of the 9th USENIX Conference on Operating Systems Design and Implementation, OSDI 2010, pp. 1–6. USENIX Association, Berkeley (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Lakhina, A., Crovella, M., Diot, C.: Mining anomalies using traffic feature distributions. In: ACM SIGCOMM. pp. 217–228 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Mahoney, M.V.: Network traffic anomaly detection based on packet bytes. In: Matsui, M., Zuccherato, R.J. (eds.) SAC 2003. LNCS, vol. 3006, pp. 346–350. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Mai, J., Chuah, C.N., Sridharan, A., Ye, T., Zang, H.: Is sampled data sufficient for anomaly detection? In: Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement, IMC 2006, pp. 165–176. ACM, New York (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  28. McKeown, N., Anderson, T., Balakrishnan, H., Parulkar, G., Peterson, L., Rexford, J., Shenker, S., Turner, J.: Openflow: enabling innovation in campus networks. SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 38, 69–74 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Schechter, S.E., Jung, J., Berger, A.W.: Fast detection of scanning worm infections. In: Jonsson, E., Valdes, A., Almgren, M. (eds.) RAID 2004. LNCS, vol. 3224, pp. 59–81. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  30. Twycross, J., Williamson, M.M.: Implementing and testing a virus throttle. In: Proceedings of the 12th Conference on USENIX Security Symposium, vol. 12, p. 20. USENIX Association, Berkeley (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Williamson, M.M.: Throttling viruses: Restricting propagation to defeat malicious mobile code. In: ACSAC (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  32. Yang, J., Edwards, W.K.: A study on network management tools of householders. In: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Home Networks, HomeNets 2010, pp. 1–6. ACM, New York (2010)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  33. Cai, Z., Cox, A.L., Eugene Ng, T.S.: Maestro: A system for scalable openflow control, http://www.cs.rice.edu/~eugeneng/papers/TR10-11.pdf

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Robin Sommer Davide Balzarotti Gregor Maier

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Mehdi, S.A., Khalid, J., Khayam, S.A. (2011). Revisiting Traffic Anomaly Detection Using Software Defined Networking. In: Sommer, R., Balzarotti, D., Maier, G. (eds) Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection. RAID 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6961. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23644-0_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23644-0_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-23643-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-23644-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics