SDN-based solutions for Moving Target Defense network protection

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) allows network capabilities and services to be managed through a central control point. Moving Target Defense (MTD) on the other hand, introduces a constantly adapting environment in order to delay or prevent attacks on a system. MTD is a use case where SDN can be leveraged in order to provide attack surface obfuscation. In this paper, we investigate how SDN can be used in some network-based MTD techniques. We first describe the advantages and disadvantages of these techniques, the potential countermeasures attackers could take to circumvent them, and the overhead of implementing MTD using SDN. Subsequently, we study the performance of the SDN-based MTD methods using Cisco´s One Platform Kit and we show that they significantly increase the attacker´s overheads.