  Software-defined networking is considered a promising new paradigm, enabling
more reliable and formally verifiable communication networks. However, this
paper shows that the separation of the control plane from the data plane, which
lies at the heart of Software-Defined Networks (SDNs), can be exploited for
covert channels based on SDN Teleportation, even when the data planes are
physically disconnected.
  This paper describes the theoretical model and design of our covert timing
channel based on SDN Teleportation. We implement our covert channel using a
popular SDN switch, Open vSwitch, and a popular SDN controller, ONOS. Our
evaluation of the prototype shows that even under load at the controller,
throughput rates of 20 bits per second are possible, with a communication
accuracy of approximately 90\%. We also discuss techniques to increase the
throughput further.
