Incentive Compatible Moving Target Defense against VM-Colocation Attacks in Clouds

Abstract

Cloud computing has changed how services are provided and supported through the computing infrastructure. However, recent work [11] reveals that virtual machine (VM) colocation based side-channel attack can leak users privacy. Techniques have been developed against side-channel attacks. Some of them like NoHype remove the hypervisor layer, which suggests radically changes of the current cloud architecture. While some other techniques may require new processor design that is not immediately available to the cloud providers. In this paper, we propose to construct an incentive-compatible moving-targetdefense by periodically migrating VMs, making it much harder for adversaries to locate the target VMs. We developed theories about whether the migration of VMs is worthy and how the optimal migration interval can be determined. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first effort to develop a formal and quantified model to guide the migration strategy of clouds to improve security. Our analysis shows that our placement based defense can significantly improve the security level of the cloud with acceptable costs.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Moving Target Defenses Using Security Models

“…Figure 2 shows the HARM of the virtualized system. The AT shown in Figure 2 for V M 1 (as shown in Table 1 [14], [15], [16] Application [17], [18] Diversity Topology [19], [20] Application [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26] Redundancy Topology [27], [28] Application [29], [30], [31], [32] …”

“…The Shuffle technique rearranges the system setting in various layers (e..g., address ran-domization, migration, topology rearrangements) [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]. The Diversity technique provides equivalent functions with different implementations (e.g., operating systems, variant inputs and interpreters, variant software stack components) [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26].…”

CHAOS: An SDN-Based Moving Target Defense System

“…Zhang et al [24] proposed to construct an incentive compatible moving target defense by periodically migrating virtual machines (VMs), thereby making it much harder for adversaries to locate the target VMs. Gillani et al [25] proposed to defend against DDoS attacks by migrating virtual networks (VNs) to dynamically reallocate network resources.…”

Improving Cloud Survivability through Dependency based Virtual Machine Placement

“…Our previous work (Zhang et al, 2012) proposed to periodically migrating VMs based on game theory, making it much harder for adversaries to locate the target VMs in terms of survivability measurement. However, our previous work did not discuss how to evaluate the security of a cloud placement and how to generate a placement plan to improve the cloud security.…”