Detecting Manipulation to Table Rules in the Programmable Data Planes

Ranjitha K; Karuturi Havya Sree; Devansh Garg; Stavan Nilesh Christian; Dheekshitha Bheemanath; Rinku Shah; Praveen Tammana

Detecting Manipulation to Table Rules in the Programmable Data Planes

Ranjitha K, Karuturi Havya Sree, Devansh Garg, Stavan Nilesh Christian, Dheekshitha Bheemanath, Rinku Shah, Praveen Tammana

IFIP Networking Conference (IFIP Networking), 2025. Limassol, Cyprus. pp. 438–446.

PDF BibTeX REV baseline code

Abstract

Network management systems built on programmable data planes enhance network performance, security, and reliability. However, these systems also increase the attack surface and, hence, are vulnerable to attacks not seen before. We focus on a problem that stems from the fact that a switch data plane trusts the control messages (e.g., table update messages) from upper layers in the switch control plane (OS, SDK, drivers). Since these control messages define the packet forwarding behavior, unauthorized modification to the messages by an adversary at any of these layers can lead to poor performance, privacy compromise, security bypass, and network outage.

In this paper, we present P4TVal, a P4 Table rule Validation system that detects unauthorized updates to table rules. Our key idea is early detection, where a table rule update is promptly followed by an authenticated rule validation. To realize this idea, we craft and send custom packets to hit specific table rules in the data plane and validate the table rules actually applied to them. We prototype P4TVal for Intel Tofino and BMV2 and demonstrate how P4TVal can detect unauthorized modifications to table rules. Our evaluation shows that P4TVal's early detection reduces the detection time by 10X compared to the state-of-the-art approach.

My Contribution

I implemented REV, the prior state of the art, in P4 on BMv2 as the baseline P4TVal is compared against. I ran the detection-time comparison across networks of 2 to 32 switches (Fig. 7), and measured P4TVal's data-plane overhead on an Intel Tofino switch (Fig. 8). More on the projects page.

Cite

@inproceedings{k2025p4tval,
  author    = {{Ranjitha K} and Karuturi Havya Sree and Devansh Garg and
               Stavan Nilesh Christian and Dheekshitha Bheemanath and
               Rinku Shah and Praveen Tammana},
  title     = {Detecting Manipulation to Table Rules in the Programmable Data Planes},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the IFIP Networking Conference (IFIP Networking)},
  address   = {Limassol, Cyprus},
  pages     = {438--446},
  year      = {2025}
}