No Silver Lining: Information Leakage in Cloud Infrastructures
Abstract:
As more businesses and individuals migrate their workloads to cloud infrastructures, many are unaware of a potential issue inherent in these systems: information leakage, the potential inadvertent release of data through a Virtual Machine (VM) to another VM, which then transfers the information to a third party. An assumption is that there is no interaction between multiple VMs, even if they reside within the same cabinet. Unfortunately, this is not true. This paper presents a selected history of VM information leakage via various covert timing channel attacks and shows that over time the practicality of these attacks is increasing.
AUTHORS
School of Interdisciplinary Informatics University of Nebraska-Omaha
Omaha, NE, United States
William R. Mahoney, Ph.D. is a professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Dr. Mahoney is also a principal investigator for the Scholarship for Service program–a student aid program for cybersecurity students managed by the National Science Foundation. His research areas include code obfuscation, reverse engineering and anti-reverse engineering techniques, as well as vulnerability analysis, particularly with respect to critical infrastructure equipment. He regularly teaches in both the Cybersecurity and Computer Science areas and is a reviewer for several information warfare and cybersecurity publications and conferences.
Published In
Journal of Information Warfare
The definitive publication for the best and latest research and analysis on information warfare, information operations, and cyber crime. Available in traditional hard copy or online.
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