Toward Security-Enhanced In-band Network Telemetry in Programmable Networks

In-band Network Telemetry (INT) is a widely used monitoring framework in modern large-scale networks. It provides packet-level visibility into network conditions by inserting telemetry data into packets, enabling unprecedented fine-grained network management. However, this mechanism also introduces new vulnerabilities that malicious attackers can exploit. In this paper, we present eight In-band Network Telemetry Manipulation Attacks that take advantage of INT’s weakness, demonstrating that attackers can cause severe damage with little effort by manipulating INT packets. To address this issue, we designed SecureINT, a security-enhanced INT prototype that provides encryption and integrity verification for INT packets. Specifically, SecureINT deploys Even-Mansour and SipHash for confidentiality and integrity, respectively. It also uses a zero-delay rotation mechanism, which enables administrators to dynamically change the version of the deployed Even-Mansour/SipHash running on programmable switches without the need to re-install new programs. In this way, SecureINT can provide lasting security for INT packets using the limited resources of programmable switches. According to the experiments, SecureINT can be deployed on programmable switches using a single pipeline. Besides, the overhead of the rotation mechanism running on the control plane is still minimal.