Southbound API management plane traffic for configuring SDN parameters on physical network elements must be authenticated using DOD PKI certificate-based authentication.

Description

<VulnDiscussion>Physical SDN-enabled switches are dependent on the SDN controller for their forwarding tables as well as their configuration and service parameters. This information is provided to the switches via SDN management plane protocols such as Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) and Open vSwitch Database Management Protocol (OVSDB). The latter provides configuration support for OpenFlow-enabled switches such as Open vSwitch, as well as many vendor switches. Without authenticating management packets, physical switches within the SDN infrastructure could receive fictitious information from a rogue management system that could shut down interfaces, thereby altering the physical network topology. By altering the network topology, the attacker would have the ability to force traffic to bypass security controls. Legitimate traffic could be dropped by deploying access control lists to active interfaces. Spoofed management plane traffic generated by a rogue management system could result in a denial-of-service attack on the switches, resulting in a network outage.</VulnDiscussion><FalsePositives></FalsePositives><FalseNegatives></FalseNegatives><Documentable>false</Documentable><Mitigations></Mitigations><SeverityOverrideGuidance></SeverityOverrideGuidance><PotentialImpacts></PotentialImpacts><ThirdPartyTools></ThirdPartyTools><MitigationControl></MitigationControl><Responsibility></Responsibility><IAControls></IAControls>