Exploring Virtual Machine Covert Channel via I/O Performance Interference

Yang, Ziye; Chen, Ping

doi:10.1109/cloudcom-asia.2013.62

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 20 publications

(32 reference statements)

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“…As a result, they have been able to achieve a bandwidth of 0.1 bit/s, which is still low but a significant improvement compared with the original bandwidth. A general transmission protocol for I/O–based CCs has been proposed by Yang et al, which they use to construct a hard disk CC, achieving 125 bit/s in a laboratory environment. Elimination would be possible by having distinct volumes per VM, which is costly and reduces scalability since the space required in the future is not predictable.…”

Section: Mapping Of Covert Channels To Cloud Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Survey on covert channels in virtual machines and cloud computing

Betz

Westhoff

Müller

2016

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech.

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Covert channels have been known for a long time because of their versatile forms of appearance. For nearly every technical improvement or change in technology, such channels have been (re‐)created or known methods have been adapted. For example, the introduction of hyperthreading technology has introduced new possibilities for covert communication between malicious processes because they can now share the arithmetic logical unit as well as the L1 and L2 caches, which enable establishing multiple covert channels. Even virtualization, which is known for its isolation of multiple machines, is prone to covert‐ and side‐channel attacks because of the sharing of resources. Therefore, it is not surprising that cloud computing is not immune to this kind of attacks. Moreover, cloud computing with multiple, possibly competing users or customers using the same shared resources may elevate the risk of illegitimate communication. In such a setting, the “air gap” between physical servers and networks disappears, and only the means of isolation and virtual separation serve as a barrier between adversary and victim. In the work at hand, we will provide a survey on vulnerable spots that an adversary could exploit trying to exfiltrate private data from target virtual machines through covert channels in a cloud environment. We will evaluate the feasibility of example attacks and point out proposed mitigation solutions in case they exist.

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Section: Mapping Of Covert Channels To Cloud Componentsmentioning

confidence: 99%