Adversarial VNet embeddings: A threat for ISPs?

Yvonne-Anne Pignolet, Stefan Schmid, Gilles Trédan

Abstract: This paper demonstrates that virtual networks that are dynamically embedded on a given resource network may constitute a security threat as properties of the infrastructure-typically a business secret-are disclosed. We initiate the study of this new problem and introduce the notion of request complexity which captures the number of virtual network embedding requests needed to fully disclose the infrastructure topology. We derive lower bounds and present algorithms achieving an asymptotically optimal request complexity for the important class of tree and cactus graphs (complexity θ(n)) as well as arbitrary graphs (complexity θ(n <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> )).