Botnet detection using software defined networking

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is considered as a new approach promising simplified network management by providing a programmable interface. The idea of SDN is based on the separation of control plane from the data plane in networking devices. This is achieved by having the network intelligence centralised in what is called as SDN controller. In this paper we propose techniques for botnet detection in networks using SDN. The SDN controller makes use of generic templates for capturing the traffic flow information from the OpenFlow switches and makes use of this information for detecting bots. We will show that our model can detect a range of bots including IRC, HTTP and peer-to-peer bots.