TCG based approach for secure management of virtualized platforms: state-of-the-art

There is a strong trend shift in the favor of adopting virtualization to get business benefits. The provisioning of virtualized enterprise resources is one kind of many possible scenarios. Where virtualization promises clear advantages it also poses new security challenges which need to be addressed to gain stakeholders confidence in the dynamics of new environment. One important facet of these challenges is establishing 'Trust' which is a basic primitive for any viable business model. The Trusted computing group (TCG) offers technologies and mechanisms required to establish this trust in the target platforms. Moreover, TCG technologies enable protecting of sensitive data in rest and transit. This report explores the applicability of relevant TCG concepts to virtualize enterprise resources securely for provisioning, establish trust in the target platforms and securely manage these virtualized Trusted Platforms

Technical Report on Deploying a highly secured OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure using BradStack as a Case Study

Cloud computing has emerged as a popular paradigm and an attractive model for providing a reliable distributed computing model.it is increasing attracting huge attention both in academic research and industrial initiatives. Cloud deployments are paramount for institution and organizations of all scales. The availability of a flexible, free open source cloud platform designed with no propriety software and the ability of its integration with legacy systems and third-party applications are fundamental. Open stack is a free and opensource software released under the terms of Apache license with a fragmented and distributed architecture making it highly flexible. This project was initiated and aimed at designing a secured cloud infrastructure called BradStack, which is built on OpenStack in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Bradford. In this report, we present and discuss the steps required in deploying a secured BradStack Multi-node cloud infrastructure and conducting Penetration testing on OpenStack Services to validate the effectiveness of the security controls on the BradStack platform. This report serves as a practical guideline, focusing on security and practical infrastructure related issues. It also serves as a reference for institutions looking at the possibilities of implementing a secured cloud solution.Comment: 38 pages, 19 figures

KVM Based Virtualization and Remote Management

In the recent past, cloud computing is the most significant shifts and Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) is the most commonly deployed hypervisor which are used in the IaaS layer of the cloud computing systems. The Hypervisor is the one which provides the complete virtualization environment which will intend to virtualize as much as hardware and systems which will include the CPUs, Memory, network interfaces and so on. Because of the virtualization technologies such as the KVM and others such as ESXi, there has been a significant decrease in the usage if the resources and decrease in the costs involved. Firstly, in this Paper I will be discussing about the different hypervisors that are used for the virtualization of the systems, then I discuss about how the virtualization using the Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) is made easy, and then discuss about the Host security, the access and the security of the KVM virtual machines by the remote management using the Secure Sell (SSH) tunnels, Simple Authentication and Secure Layer (SASL) authentication and Transport Layer Security (TLS)

Evaluating Security Aspects for Building a Secure Virtual Machine

One of the essential characteristics of cloud computing that revolutionized the IT business is the sharing of computing resources. Despite all the benefits, security is a major concern in a cloud virtualization environment. Among those security issues is securely managing the Virtual Machine (VM) images that contain operating systems, configured platforms, and data. Confidentiality, availability, and integrity of such images pose major concerns as it determines the overall security of the virtual machines. This paper identified and discussed the attributes that define the degree of security in VM images. It will address this problem by explaining the different methods and frameworks developed in the past to address implementing secure VM images. Finally, this paper analyses the security issues and attributes and proposes a framework that will include an approach that helps to develop secure VM images. This work aims to enhance the security of cloud environments

A Taxonomy of Virtualization Security Issues in Cloud Computing Environments

Objectives: To identify the main challenges and security issues of virtualization in cloud computing environments. It reviews the alleviation techniques for improving the security of cloud virtualization systems. Methods/ Statistical Analysis: Virtualization is a fundamental technology for cloud computing, and for this reason, any cloud vulnerabilities and threats affect virtualization. In this study, the systematic literature review is performed to find out the vulnerabilities and risks of virtualization in cloud computing and to identify threats, and attacks result from those vulnerabilities. Furthermore, we discover and analyze the effective mitigation techniques that are used to protect, secure, and manage virtualization environments. Findings: Thirty vulnerabilities are identified, explained, and classified into six proposed classes. Furthermore, fifteen main virtualization threats and attacks ar defined according to exploited vulnerabilities in a cloud environment. Application/Improvements: A set of common mitigation solutions are recognized and discovered to alleviate the virtualization security risks. These reviewed techniques are analyzed and evaluated according to five specified security criteria