DDoS attacks in cloud computing: Issues, taxonomy, and future directions

Abstract

Security issues related to the cloud computing are relevant to various stakeholders for an informed cloud adoption decision. Apart from data breaches, the cyber security research community is revisiting the attack space for cloud-specific solutions as these issues affect budget, resource management, and service quality. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is one such serious attack in the cloud space. In this paper, we present developments related to DDoS attack mitigation solutions in the cloud. In particular, we present a comprehensive survey with a detailed insight into the characterization, prevention, detection, and mitigation mechanisms of these attacks. Additionally, we present a comprehensive solution taxonomy to classify DDoS attack solutions. We also provide a comprehensive discussion on important metrics to evaluate various solutions. This survey concludes that there is a strong requirement of solutions, which are designed keeping utility computing models in mind. Accurate auto-scaling decisions, multi-layer mitigation, and defense using profound resources in the cloud, are some of the key requirements of the desired solutions. In the end, we provide a definite guideline on effective solution building and detailed solution requirements to help the cyber security research community in designing defense mechanisms. To the best of our knowledge, this work is a novel attempt to identify the need of DDoS mitigation solutions involving multi-level information flow and effective resource management during the attack.

The conjectural framework for detecting DDoS attack using enhanced entropy based threshold technique (EEB-TT) in cloud environment

“…Based on these attributes status pattern, this work proposes a novel framework for detecting DDoS attacks. Legal VMs reveal the similar status patterns and malicious VMs disclose the similar status patterns in a cloud server [8]. Using this technique, malicious VMs are identified and relevant attack behaviors are discovered by applying entropy information theory.…”

Entropy-Based Economic Denial of Sustainability Detection

“…EDoS are also tagged in the bibliography as Reduction of Quality (RoQ) threats [13], or Fraudulent Resource Consumption attacks (FRC) [14]. These intrusions take advantage of the "pay-as-you-go" accounting model offered by most of the Cloud Computing providers and their auto-scaling services [15]. Their modus operandi slightly varies depending on the providers and the Cloud solutions they offer (e.g., OpenStack, Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2, etc.)…”

Analysis on DDoS attacks in Cloud Networks

“…Apart from these, thestudy also discussed the various measures that could be used to evaluate the various solutions defined in the study. To sum up, thestudy provided the guidelines about how to build an effective mechanism for detection of attacks [11].…”