Address Resolution Protocol Spoofing Mitigation in Software-Defined Networks using Ryu Controller's Centralized Flow Control

Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) spoofing is a severe threat in Software-Defined Networking (SDN) systems, allowing attackers to modify network traffic via Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks. This study presents an effective proactive ARP spoofing defense that uses SDN's centralized control and programmability features. The system continually analyzes ARP packets, keeps an accurate logical and physical address mapping, and dynamically adds flow restrictions to prevent malicious hosts from imitating legitimate devices. The proposed system identifies and prevents single and multiple source ARP spoofing attacks in real-time at O(1) processing cost, resulting in low network overhead. The experiment conducted on an SDN-simulated environment proved that the Ryu controller can mitigate ARP spoofing attempts while preserving legitimate network activities. Furthermore, the proposed technique can scale in terms of network capacity and traffic volume. The proposed automated and scalable ARP spoofing approach enhances SDN cybersecurity.