A new framework to alleviate DDoS vulnerabilities in cloud computing

In the communication age, the Internet has growing very fast and most industries rely on it. An essential part of Internet, Web applications like online booking, e-banking, online shopping, and e-learning plays a vital role in everyday life. Enhancements have been made in this domain, in which the web servers depend on cloud location for resources. Many organizations around the world change their operations and data storage from local to cloud platforms for many reasons especially the availability factor. Even though cloud computing is considered a renowned technology, it has many challenges, the most important one is security. One of the major issue in the cloud security is Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS), which results in serious loss if the attack is successful and left unnoticed. This paper focuses on preventing and detecting DDoS attacks in distributed and cloud environment. A new framework has been suggested to alleviate the DDoS attack and to provide availability of cloud resources to its users. The framework introduces three screening tests VISUALCOM, IMGCOM, and AD-IMGCOM to prevent the attack and two queues with certain constraints to detect the attack. The result of our framework shows an improvement and better outcomes and provides a recovered from attack detection with high availability rate. Also, the performance of the queuing model has been analysed

Exploiting cloud utility models for profit and ruin

A key characteristic that has led to the early adoption of public cloud computing is the utility pricing model that governs the cost of compute resources consumed. Similar to public utilities like gas and electricity, cloud consumers only pay for the resources they consume and only for the time they are utilized. As a result and pursuant to a Cloud Service Provider\u27s (CSP) Terms of Agreement, cloud consumers are responsible for all computational costs incurred within and in support of their rented computing environments whether these resources were consumed in good faith or not. While initial threat modeling and security research on the public cloud model has primarily focused on the confidentiality and integrity of data transferred, processed, and stored in the cloud, little attention has been paid to the external threat sources that have the capability to affect the financial viability of cloud-hosted services. Bounded by a utility pricing model, Internet-facing web resources hosted in the cloud are vulnerable to Fraudulent Resource Consumption (FRC) attacks. Unlike an application-layer DDoS attack that consumes resources with the goal of disrupting short-term availability, a FRC attack is a considerably more subtle attack that instead targets the utility model over an extended time period. By fraudulently consuming web resources in sufficient volume (i.e. data transferred out of the cloud), an attacker is able to inflict significant fraudulent charges to the victim. This work introduces and thoroughly describes the FRC attack and discusses why current application-layer DDoS mitigation schemes are not applicable to a more subtle attack. The work goes on to propose three detection metrics that together form the criteria for detecting a FRC attack from that of normal web activity and an attribution methodology capable of accurately identifying FRC attack clients. Experimental results based on plausible and challenging attack scenarios show that an attacker, without knowledge of the training web log, has a difficult time mimicking the self-similar and consistent request semantics of normal web activity necessary to carryout a successful FRC attack

Intrusion Detection and Countermeasure of Virtual Cloud Systems - State of the Art and Current Challenges

Clouds are distributed Internet-based platforms that provide highly resilient and scalable environments to be used by enterprises in a multitude of ways. Cloud computing offers enterprises technology innovation that business leaders and IT infrastructure managers can choose to apply based on how and to what extent it helps them fulfil their business requirements. It is crucial that all technical consultants have a rigorous understanding of the ramifications of cloud computing as its influence is likely to spread the complete IT landscape. Security is one of the major concerns that is of practical interest to decision makers when they are making critical strategic operational decisions. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are becoming more frequent and effective over the past few years, since the widely publicised DDoS attacks on the financial services industry that came to light in September and October 2012 and resurfaced in the past two years. In this paper, we introduce advanced cloud security technologies and practices as a series of concepts and technology architectures, from an industry-centric point of view. This is followed by classification of intrusion detection and prevention mechanisms that can be part of an overall strategy to help understand identify and mitigate potential DDoS attacks on business networks. The paper establishes solid coverage of security issues related to DDoS and virtualisation with a focus on structure, clarity, and well-defined blocks for mainstream cloud computing security solutions and platforms. In doing so, we aim to provide industry technologists, who may not be necessarily cloud or security experts, with an effective tool to help them understand the security implications associated with cloud adoption in their transition towards more knowledge-based systems

Security Technologies and Methods for Advanced Cyber Threat Intelligence, Detection and Mitigation

The rapid growth of the Internet interconnectivity and complexity of communication systems has led us to a significant growth of cyberattacks globally often with severe and disastrous consequences. The swift development of more innovative and effective (cyber)security solutions and approaches are vital which can detect, mitigate and prevent from these serious consequences. Cybersecurity is gaining momentum and is scaling up in very many areas. This book builds on the experience of the Cyber-Trust EU project’s methods, use cases, technology development, testing and validation and extends into a broader science, lead IT industry market and applied research with practical cases. It offers new perspectives on advanced (cyber) security innovation (eco) systems covering key different perspectives. The book provides insights on new security technologies and methods for advanced cyber threat intelligence, detection and mitigation. We cover topics such as cyber-security and AI, cyber-threat intelligence, digital forensics, moving target defense, intrusion detection systems, post-quantum security, privacy and data protection, security visualization, smart contracts security, software security, blockchain, security architectures, system and data integrity, trust management systems, distributed systems security, dynamic risk management, privacy and ethics

Resilience to DDoS attacks

Tese de mestrado, Segurança Informática, 2022, Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de CiênciasDistributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) is one of the most common cyberattack used by malicious actors. It has been evolving over the years, using more complex techniques to increase its attack power and surpass the current defense mechanisms. Due to the existent number of different DDoS attacks and their constant evolution, companies need to be constantly aware of developments in DDoS solutions Additionally, the existence of multiple solutions, also makes it hard for companies to decide which solution best suits the company needs and must be implemented. In order to help these companies, our work focuses in analyzing the existing DDoS solutions, for companies to implement solutions that can lead to the prevention, detection, mitigation, and tolerance of DDoS attacks, with the objective of improving the robustness and resilience of the companies against DDoS attacks. In our work, it is presented and described different DDoS solutions, some need to be purchased and other are open-source or freeware, however these last solutions require more technical expertise by cybersecurity agents. To understand how cybersecurity agents protect their companies against DDoS attacks, nowadays, it was built a questionnaire and sent to multiple cybersecurity agents from different countries and industries. As a result of the study performed about the different DDoS solutions and the information gathered from the questionnaire, it was possible to create a DDoS framework to guide companies in the decisionmaking process of which DDoS solutions best suits their resources and needs, in order to ensure that companies can develop their robustness and resilience to fight DDoS attacks. The proposed framework it is divided in three phases, in which the first and second phase is to understand the company context and the asset that need to be protected. The last phase is where we choose the DDoS solution based on the information gathered in the previous phases. We analyzed and presented for each DDoS solutions, which DDoS attack types they can prevent, detect and/or mitigate