An Automated SMT-based Security Framework for Supporting Migrations in Cloud Composite Services

Abstract

The growing maturity of orchestration languages is contributing to the elaboration of cloud composite services, whose resources may be deployed over different distributed infrastructures. These composite services are subject to changes over time, that are typically required to support cloud properties, such as scalability and rapid elasticity. In particular, the migration of their elementary resources may be triggered by performance constraints. However, changes induced by this migration may introduce vulnerabilities that may compromise the resources, or even the whole cloud service. In that context, we propose an automated SMT 1 -based security framework for supporting the migration of resources in cloud composite services, and preventing the occurrence of new configuration vulnerabilities. We formalize the underlying security automation based on SMT solving, in order to assess the migrated resources and select adequate counter-measures, considering both endogenous and exogenous security mechanisms. We then evaluate its benefits and limits through large series of experiments based on a proof-ofconcept prototype implemented over the CVC4 commonly-used open-source solver. These experiments show a minimal overhead with regular operating systems deployed in cloud environments.

C3S-TTP: A Trusted Third Party for Configuration Security in TOSCA-Based Cloud Services

“…For instance, the authors of [16] propose an endogenous approach based on the generation of protected unikernel images, corresponding to lightweight virtual machines containing only the strict necessary packages and libraries in order to minimize the attack surface of cloud resources. We also started to work on securing composite services based on vulnerability descriptions expressed with the OVAL language [17], but without considering information disclosure issues [7]. Certification techniques, such as [18,19], have been considered for guaranteeing the behavior of cloud resources.…”

“…It then requests cloud service providers to get configuration information regarding potential hosting environments, including the resource versioning and parameterization of these cloud environments, and also information regarding security mechanisms that may be implemented by the cloud providers. Considering this overall knowledge and using our OVAL 3 -based vulnerability assessment framework detailed in [7], the third party determines configuration vulnerabilities that may appear during the migration of resources over potential hosting environments. These assessment results enable the trusted third party to recommend or decline the migration of a given resource back to the cloud tenant, while reducing the disclosure of configuration information amongst involved cloud tenants and cloud providers.…”

C3S-TTP: A Trusted Third Party for Configuration Security in TOSCA-based Cloud Services

“…For instance, the authors of [16] propose an endogenous approach based on the generation of protected unikernel images, corresponding to lightweight virtual machines containing only the strict necessary packages and libraries in order to minimize the attack surface of cloud resources. We also started to work on securing composite services based on vulnerability descriptions expressed with the OVAL language [17], but without considering information disclosure issues [7]. Certification techniques, such as [18,19], have been considered for guaranteeing the behavior of cloud resources.…”

CMSec: A Vulnerability Prevention Tool for Supporting Migrations in Cloud Composite Services

“…The proposed tool, called CMSec (Cloud Migration Security), aims at preventing known vulnerabilities that may affect cloud composite services during the migration of their resources, through the assessment of their configurations and the selection of adequate countermeasures when vulnerabilities are identified. It corresponds to the implementation of the strategy that we have formalized in [6]. The CMSec architecture, detailed on Figure 1, has been prototyped using the Python language version 3.7, and relies on SMT solvers compatible with the SMT-LIB (Satisfiability Modulo Theories LIBrary) format [7] as back-end services.…”

“…This latter relies on a set of vulnerability descriptions from the official OVAL repository (Arrow 5). The vulnerability assessment process is formalized as a satisfiability issue [6], by considering the vulnerability descriptions together with the resource projection, and generates an SMT-LIB specification. Our assessor building block then exploits the CVC4 SMT solver to interpret and solve this SMT-LIB specification, and therefore determine whether the projection matches any vulnerable configurations.…”