An SDN-based IP hopping communication scheme against scanning attack

Scanning attack threatens the security of network communication severely. Traditional network communication usually uses static IP address configuration, which provides convenience to scanning attackers. In this paper, an IP Hopping (IPH) communication scheme is proposed based on software-defined network to solve this problem, in which IP addresses can be assigned to the hosts in the network dynamically so that dynamic network communication can be achieved. IPH is a live IP address allocation scheme, which can transparently change the hosts' IP in active communications without interrupting them. In addition, multi-channel protocol can be supported in IPH as well. Experiments show that IPH can efficiently resist scanning attacks and support multi-channel protocols with relatively low cost.