Secure northbound interface for SDN applications with NTRU public key infrastructure

The most important features of software-defined networking is the flexibility and network development capability by the ability of the network to be programmable. Accordingly, the controller delivers network resources to the third party applications or other networks through the Northbound Interface (NBI) of SDN. But this interface has some defects, including the lack of necessary security features such as authentication and access level determination. In this paper, we presented a new solution for using third party applications from network resources based on the NTRU algorithm and the NSS digital signature, which by the controller can provide network information only for approved and reliable programs through a safe REST API. The results show that using the NTRU against algorithms such as RSA and ECC presents low memory consumption, high speed, and low computing, although it does not work faster on small Networks.