An ECDH and AES Based Encryption Approach for Prevention of MiTM in SDN Southbound Communication Interface

The Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture is a major paradigm shift where the detachment of data plane from the control plane takes place and a central controller administers the whole network which makes the design of new applications and services. But this arrangement poses some serious security threats also which can disrupt the whole network from functioning and hence these loopholes must be concealed to reinforce the security of the whole network. One of the most devastating security attack is Man In the Middle(MiTM) attack where the attacker silently sniffs the traffic between sender and receiver and can perform several malicious actions. In this work we have proposed an encryption based solution which is based on Elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman key exchange (ECDH) and Advanced Encryption Standard(AES) 256 cipher suite for the prevention of MiTM attack in the Southbound Interface(SBI) of SDN architecture which is in between the controller and the forwarding devices. Throughout this article the words architecture and paradigm have been used interchangeably.