Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has emerged as a revolutionary architecture in computer networks, offering comprehensive network control and monitoring capabilities. However, securing the east–west interface, which is crucial for communication between distributed SDN controllers, remains a significant challenge. This study proposes a novel blockchain-based security framework that integrates Ethereum technology with customized blockchain algorithms for authentication, encryption, and access control. The framework introduces decentralized mechanisms to protect against diverse attacks, including false data injection, man-in-the-middle (MitM), and unauthorized access. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this framework in securing distributed controllers while maintaining high network performance and low latency, paving the way for more resilient and trustworthy SDN infrastructures.

With the rapid increase of cyberattacks that presently affect distributed software systems, cyberattacks and their consequences have become critical issues and have attracted the interest of research communities and companies to address them. Therefore, developing and improving attack detection techniques are prominent methods to defend against cyberattacks. One of the promising attack detection methods is behaviour-based attack detection methods. Practically, attack detection techniques are widely applied in distributed software systems that utilise network environments. However, there are some other challenges facing attack detection techniques, such as the immutability and reliability of the detection systems. These challenges can be overcome with promising technologies such as blockchain. Blockchain offers a concrete solution for ensuring data integrity against unauthorised modification. Hence, it improves the immutability for detection systems’ data and thus the reliability for the target systems. In this paper, we propose a design for standalone behaviour-based attack detection techniques that utilise blockchain’s functionalities to overcome the above-mentioned challenges. Additionally, we provide a validation experiment to prove our proposal in term of achieving its objectives. We argue that our proposal introduces a novel approach to develop and improve behaviour-based attack detection techniques to become more reliable for distributed software systems.