HackInSDN: A Flexible, Incremental, and Portable Architecture for Cybersecurity Experimentation

• Italo V. S. Brito UFBA http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2669-2792
• Talita R. Pinheiro UFBA
• Mayara R. E. Santos UFBA
• Raquel S. M. Santos UFBA
• Gustavo Gomes IFBA
• Henrique Q. S. Sampaio UFBA
• Allan E. S. Freitas IFBA https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2503-3100
• Leobino N. Sampaio UFBA https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4855-0936

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbrc.2025.6392

Abstract

Testbed environments for experimenting and teaching cybersecurity with real-world characteristics and isolated resources can be an alternative to address recent security threats and challenges. Traditional experimentation tools, datasets, and existing testbeds usually provide few cybersecurity specialized resources or unrealistic scenarios, which pose challenges for building near to production experiments with component reuse. This paper presents HackInSDN, an architecture based on programmable testbed infrastructures for teaching and experimentation in cybersecurity. HackInSDN incorporates monitoring tools, offensive security, benign traffic generation, network programmability, anomaly detection, and threat intelligence capabilities into a modular and scalable platform. A proof of concept was developed and integrated into a Kubernetes cluster. Use cases demonstrate the benefits of the proposed architecture.

Keywords: Cybersecurity, Computer Networks, Testbed, Education, Experimentation, SDN

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