MD-UCON: A Multi-Domain Access Control Model for SDN Northbound Interfaces

In SDN (Software Defined Network) environments, for the security considerations of the upper-layer application behaviors, we need to consider adding an access control mechanism to the northbound interface of the SDN control layer to limit the capabilities of the upper-layer applications, thereby improving the security of the SDN. In addition, considering the performance and management requirements of SDN, access control features including cross-domain support should be considered. In this paper, we proposed an MD-UCON access control model with role mechanism extension based on UCON and role-based access control mechanism. At the same time, we introduced a cross-domain role mapping method to support cross-domain access authorization, thereby enabling the model to be applied to the application of access control for the SDN northbound interface.