An Easy Defense Mechanism Against Botnet-based DDoS Flooding Attack Originated in SDN Environment Using sFlow

Abstract

As today's networks become larger and more complex, the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) flooding attack threats may not only come from the outside of networks but also from inside, such as cloud computing network where exists multiple tenants possibly containing malicious tenants. So, the need of source-based defense mechanism against such attacks is pressing. In this paper, we mainly focus on the source-based defense mechanism against Botnet-based DDoS flooding attack through combining the power of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and sample flow (sFlow) technology. Firstly, we defined a metric to measure the essential features of this kind attack which means distribution and collaboration. Then we designed a simple detection algorithm based on statistical inference model and response scheme through the abilities of SDN. Finally, we developed an application to realize our idea and also tested its effect on emulation network with real network traffic. The result shows that our mechanism could effectively detect DDoS flooding attack originated in SDN environment and identify attack flows for avoiding the harm of attack spreading to target or outside. We advocate the advantages of SDN in the area of defending DDoS attacks, because it is difficult and laborious to organize selfish and undisciplined traditional distributed network to confront well collaborative DDoS flooding attacks.