Low-Level Exploitation Mitigation by Diverse Microservices

Abstract

This paper discusses a combination of isolatable microservices and software diversity as a mitigation technique against low-level exploitation; the effectiveness and benefits of such an architecture are substantiated. We argue that the core security benefit of microservices with diversity is increased control flow isolation. Additionally, a new microservices mitigation technique leveraging a security monitor service is introduced to further exploit the architectural benefits inherent to microservice architectures.

Straddling the crevasse: A review of microservice software architecture foundations and recent advancements

“…The external threats come from other hosts, whereas internal threats arise from entities within the boundary of the system. Microservices architectures are vulnerable to both external and internal threats . Based on this aspect, we can categorize the works broadly into two.…”

“…These include users, microservices, and applications that are not part of the system under consideration. Otterstad and Yarygina discussed the various attack scenarios possible in microservices‐based systems . In order to raise the security level offered by microservices systems, the interfaces with direct contact to the external entities must be minimum, communication between microservices need to be eliminated, wherever redundant, and nodes with more security should be placed at the critical points in the network, so as to protect the more profitable microservices.…”

A Game of Microservices: Automated Intrusion Response

“…In particular, the µGE exploits the fact that a partially compromised microservice network has not yielded total control to the attacker. A strong separation of the control flow and increased isolation are inherent benefits of microservice architectures [8,9].…”

“…Scale up and down n-variant services. The N-variant microservice system was proposed as a security measure by Otterstad&Yarygina [8]. This action uses the existing diversification techniques (compiler diversity/binary rewriting and cloud diversity) to spawn additional microservices, which feed their result to a governor node that compare the results for consistency.…”

“…Sun et al [7] proposed a virtual network monitoring solution that enforces policies over the network traffic in the cloud. Otterstad & Yarygina [8] pointed out the isolation benefits of microservices, as well as proposed the use of N-version programming for a simplified IDS. Yarygina & Bagge [9] have investigated automation of secure inter-service communication and defense-in-depth principle for microservices.…”