Textual data mining of open source intelligence on the Web has become an increasingly important topic across a wide range of domains such as business, law enforcement, military, and cybersecurity. Text mining efforts utilize natural language processing to transform unstructured web content into structured forms that can drive various machine learning applications and data indexing services. For example, applications for text mining in cybersecurity have produced a range of threat intelligence services that serve the IT industry. However, a less studied problem is that of automating the identification of semantic inconsistencies among various text input sources. In this paper, we introduce GapFinder, a new inconsistency checking system for identifying semantic inconsistencies within the cybersecurity domain. Specifically, we examine the problem of identifying technical inconsistencies that arise in the functional descriptions of open source malware threat reporting information. Our evaluation, using tens of thousands of relations derived from web-based malware threat reports, demonstrates the ability of GapFinder to identify the presence of inconsistencies.

Barista is a novel architecture that seeks to enable flexible and customizable instantiations of network operating systems (NOSs) for software-defined networks (SDNs). As the NOS is the strategic control center of an SDN, implementing logic for management of network switches as well as higher-level applications, its design is critical to the welfare of the network. In this paper, we focus on three aspects of composable controller design: component synthesis, dynamic event control, and predictive NOS assessment. First, the modular design of the Barista enables flexible composition of functionalities prevalent in contemporary SDN controllers. Second, its event handling mechanism enables dynamic customization of control flows in a NOS. Third, its predictive NOS assessment helps to discover the optimal composition for the requirements specified by operators. These capabilities allow Barista operators to optimally select functionalities and dynamically handle events for their operating requirements while maximizing the resource utilization of the given system. Our results demonstrate that Barista can synthesize NOSs with many functionalities found in commodity controllers with competitive performance profiles.

As the network operating system (NOS) is the strategic control center of a software-defined network (SDN), its design is critical to the welfare of the network. Contemporary research has largely focused on specialized NOSs that seek to optimize controller design across one or a few dimensions (e.g., scalability, performance, or security) due to fundamental differences in architectural trade-offs needed to support competing demands. We thus designed Barista, as a new framework that enables flexible and customizable instantiations of network operating systems (NOSs) supporting diverse design choices. The Barista framework incorporates two mechanisms to harmonize architectural differences across design choices: component synthesis and dynamic event control. First, the modular design of the Barista framework enables flexible composition of functionalities prevalent in contemporary SDN controllers. Second, its event-handling mechanism enables dynamic adjustment of control flows in a NOS. These capabilities allow operators to easily enable functionalities and dynamically handle associated events, thereby satisfying network operating requirements. Our results demonstrate that Barista can synthesize NOSs with many functionalities found in commodity NOSs with competitive performance profiles.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN), controlling underlying network devices (i.e., data plane) in a logically centralized manner, is now actively adopted in many real world networking environments. It is clear that a network administrator can easily understand and manage his networking environments with the help of SDN. In SDN, a network operating system (NOS), also known as an SDN controller, is the most critical component because it should be involved in all transactions for controlling network devices, and thus the security of NOS cannot be highly exaggerated. However, in spite of its importance, no previous works have thoroughly investigated the security of NOS. In this work, to address this problem, we present the NOSArmor, which integrates several security mechanisms, named as security building block (SBB), into a consolidated SDN controller. NOSArmor consists of eight SBBs and each of them addresses different security principles of network assets. For example, while role-based authorization focuses on securing confidentiality of internal storage from malicious applications, OpenFlow protocol verifier protects availability of core service in the controller from malformed control messages received from switches. In addition, NOSArmor shows competitive performance compared to existing other controllers (i.e., ONOS, Floodlight) with secureness of network assets.

We design Barista, as a new framework that seeks to enable flexible and customizable instantiations of network operating systems (NOSs) supporting diverse design choices, using two key features that harmonize architectural differences across design choices: component synthesis and dynamic event control. With these capabilities, Barista operators to easily enable functionalities and dynamically adjust the control flows among those functionalities.