Applying Formal Modelling to the Specification and Testing of SDN Network Functionality

Abstract

Software Defined Networks offers a new paradigm to manage networks, one that favors centralised control over the distributed control used in legacy networks. This brings network operators potential efficiencies in capital investment, operating costs and wider choice in network appliance providers. We explore in this research whether these efficiencies apply to all network functionality by applying formal modelling to create a mathematically rigourous model of a service, a firewall, and using that model to derive tests that are ultimately applied to two SDN firewalls and a legacy stateful firewall. In the process we discover the only publicly available examples of SDN firewalls are not equivalent to legacy stateful firewalls and in fact create a security flaw that may be exploited by an attacker.