Program Synthesis for Programmable Data Planes: Generating P4 code by input-output examples

An all-important step in the ambitious pursuit towards autonomous networks has been the introduction of Software Defined Networking which has advocated the concept of separating a network’s control plane from the data plane and creating a programmable controller with a wider view of the network. This innovation proved to be very promising, but...

P4Runtime Security and Man-in-the-Middle Attacks

In software defined networking a controller can control where the data-plane routes packets to. Programmable data-planes make networks even more flexible, as the algorithms on the data-plane can be updated. The P4 programming language can be used to program data-planes, and the P4Runtime data-plane API can be used for controller to data-plane...

Exploitation of P4 Programmable Switch Networks

P4 programmable data-planes provide operators with a flexible method to set up data-plane forwarding logic. To deploy networks with confidence, a switch's forwarding logic should correspond with its intended behavior. Programs loaded onto programmable data-planes don't necessarily go through as much testing as traditional fixed-function devices...

The effect of a corrupt program on virtualized P4 programs in HyperVDP

After software defined networking (SDN) separated the control-plane from the dataplane, P4 was proposed as a solution to be able to program the data-plane. The programmable data plane (PDP) is very useful to alter the behaviour of programmable network devices. The drawback, however, is that without virtualization only one single P4 program can...

Corrupting P4 programs by manipulating packet data

Data planes are responsible for forwarding packets in a network. The P4 language is used for programming programmable data planes. Such data planes give more flexibility to programmers by allowing them to define how the packets should be processed. However, these data planes might also be more vulnerable to malicious attacks than traditional ...

Detection and Mitigation Mechanisms for Attacks in Programmable Data Planes

DDoS attacks are becoming more common and sophisticated. Only recently, in 2017, Google claims they have mitigated an attack which sent 2.54 Tbps of traffic to their servers. In order to prevent these attacks, more and more robust defence mechanisms need to be put in place to withstand the malicious traffic and secure the networks. Programmable...