Request Complexity of VNet Topology Extraction: Dictionary-Based Attacks

Abstract

The network virtualization paradigm envisions an Internet where arbitrary virtual networks (VNets) can be specified and embedded over a shared substrate (e.g., the physical infrastructure). As VNets can be requested at short notice and for a desired time period only, the paradigm enables a flexible service deployment and an efficient resource utilization. This paper investigates the security implications of such an architecture. We consider a simple model where an attacker seeks to extract secret information about the substrate topology, by issuing repeated VNet embedding requests. We present a general framework that exploits basic properties of the VNet embedding relation to infer the entire topology. Our framework is based on a graph motif dictionary applicable for various graph classes. Moreover, we provide upper bounds on the request complexity, the number of requests needed by the attacker to succeed.