Securing the control channel of software-defined mobile networks

Software-Defined Mobile Networks (SDMNs) are becoming popular as the next generation of telecommunication networks due to the enhanced performance, flexibility and scalability. In this paper, we study the new security challenges of the control channel of SDMNs and propose a novel secure control channel architecture based on Host Identity Protocol (HIP). IPsec tunneling and security gateways are widely used in today´s mobile networks. The proposed architecture utilized these technologies to protect the control channel of SDMNs. We implement the proposed architecture in a testbed and analyze the security features. Moreover, we measure the performance penalty of security of proposed architecture and analyze its ability to protect the control channel from various IP (Internet Protocol) based attacks.