Software Defined Networking: Attacks and Countermeasures

Software defined networking (SDN) is an emerging network architecture; it differs from traditional networks as it separates control planes from data planes. This separation helps the network to be more flexible and easier to handle and allows faster innovation cycles at both planes. SDN has benefit over traditional networks in terms of simplicity, programmability and elasticity. Openflow protocol is a south-bound API interface; it is the most popular and common protocol that used to communicate the controller with the switches. This paper will focus on the architecture of SDN and provide some challenges faces the SDN; finally, it will discuss some security threats that face SDN and their countermeasures.