Background
The rapid development of the information technology has been helping in transforming traditional computing into virtual machine system. This concept of the virtualization depends on the virtual machine or hypervisor. Therefore, there have been various technical consequences involved in the use of the hypervisor (Ibrahim, Hamlyn-Harris & Grundy, 2016). There is a constant time implementation that can be used for providing instruction with a specific time routine. This might help in mitigating risks in hidden channel attack. Correlations can be avoided by removing branches and loops depending on private input data. These consequence have been related to the security problems in the virtual machines.
This report outlines risks include in the hypervisor and various attacks in including hidden channel attacks. The use of the system approaches might help in maintaining a different approach in retaining the challenges in the hidden channel attacks in the hypervisor. Various risks involved in the hypervisor have been discusses. This report provide basic solutions for risks in the hypervisor.
Virtualization is a concept that helps in increasing the efficiency of the computing resources with in a time period. It helps in creating a virtual environment inside anther environment and using systems resources including RAM and Processor (Zhang et al. 2018). This helps in maintaining a keen approach to the maintenance of the computing resources. Virtual machines are directly linked with the cloud computing resources. All the data and information are stored over cloud. The use of cloud computing have been helping in providing owned services. Security concerns in the virtualized systems requires several consideration related to the threats. It has been important to realize that the trust assumptions. Threats models and security goals have been treated as proper assumption in the hypervisor. However, virtualization has been the key foundation of the cloud computing and utility computing.
The utilization of cryptography in various fields have been raising in recent years. Applications of cryptography has been found in cloud computing for securing data and information over the internet. Various cryptographic algorithms have been used in order to maintain the security of the systems (Zhang et al., 2018). All attacks are focused on the secret key of the cryptography system. Among all the attacks in the cryptography, hidden channel attacks have been the most dangerous attacks. Various applications have various execution time and allowing attackers to read these time. This type of attack require access to the virtual machine encryption operations. However, cloud computing have been dependent on the virtualization for accessing other guest operating systems (Bauman, Ayoade & Lin, 2015). Therefore, cryptographic algorithms have been attacked easily by the attackers. Channel attacks have been focused on the processor’s cache it huts hardware and software components. Different information in hidden channel attacks have been maintaining a keen approach to the development of threats in the hypervisor. There are various components of the hidden channel attacks:
Inter-Process: This type of channel has been established between two processes including spy process and victim process for running in same operating system. The use of inter process channeling helps in maintaining a positive behavior of virtual machine. The spy process needs to be move in parallel within victim process and properly synchronized.
Risk and Security concerns of hidden channel attacks
Inter-Virtual Machine: This channel can be either related to two virtual machines running in same CPU core (Kumara & Jaidhar, 2015). Therefore, synchronization between two virtual machines executing on other cores is more difficult. This kind of channel needs to be cope with more noise than other inter-process channels. A hidden channel attacks has been created within a network for yielding a noisier channel for network properties including latency.
Therefore, any end of attack might be passive or active in nature. In passive attacks, attacker observes activities of goal without performing any kind of changes in target (Park et al., 2016). The active attacks helps in changing the environment by changing the target to force in performing abnormal activities. There are three types of hidden channel attacks incusing CPU based, cache based and time based.
CPU Load based hidden channel: The CPU has been one of resources that can be shared among multiple virtual achiness. Reducing at operating system and hypervisor levels have been a proper choice fir lending proper existing cloud infrastructures with little changes (Iqbal et al., 2016). Time padding helps in ensuring the execution time of the protected function. This countermeasure has been developed in maintaining a keen approach in the development of the strategies to mitigate hidden channel attacks in the hypervisor. The CPU load has been useful for converting channel between two virtual achiness running on one CPU. There are different operations in the CPU that can be involved in information leakage.
CPU Cache based hidden channel: Cache lines that can be used during encryption of plain text passages that can help in revealing information for reconstructing an encryption key. As L1 and L2 caches that are shared among processes moving on single core (Irazoqui & Guo, 2017). LLC has been shared among all processor in the CPU. The software implementation of AES and look-up tables can be pre-calculated and stored in RAM for improving performance. However, encryption in CPU loads on tables into cache and tables can be used by encryption process.
Time based Hidden channel: The time of execution of applications are cryptographic ones for constant as it depends on execution time of algorithm instruction. Therefore, different running of an algorithm results in different execution times. Therefore, cryptographic algorithms have been attacked easily by attackers (Gorobets et al., 2015). Modular exponentiation has an important operation used in implementation of different cryptographic algorithms including AES. The use of hypervisor have been maintain the mitigating strategies from the challenges and threats of hidden channel attacks. Time of execution of frequently used square and multiply method. These type of attacks can be applicable to limited in the computing devices including smart cards. Timing attacks might be local and remote.
This type of attack require access to the virtual machine encryption operations. Therefore, as a local attack, a spy program can be ran on same machine as victim program. In a remote attack, victim and attacker can be hosted on different machines (Wang et al., 2017). This type of attacks can be applicable to the cloud based cryptosystems. All attacks are focused on the secret key of the cryptography system. Among all the attacks in the cryptography, hidden channel attacks have been the most dangerous attacks. Various applications have various execution time and allowing attackers to read these time. However, cloud computing have been dependent on the virtualization for accessing other guest operating systems.
Strategies for addressing them
Cache based timing attacks uses cache memory for locally attacking a cryptographic system. This attack has been occurred in in the DES by inferring S-box inputs for measuring encryption time of different plaintexts (Nezarat & Shams, 2017). The encryption algorithm might change due to memory activity including cache access. The attacker might tries for finding different relation between accessed cache lines and an encryption process. The attackers exploits pattern of cache accesses for the victim. Therefore, different profiles of the victim have been attacked for breaching out data and information from it. Virtual machines have been using data and information stored in the local computers and CPU. Therefore, attacks in the virtual machines might create problems for the local users.
These types of attacks are easy to execute as the time gap between two processes have been measured by the attackers before attacking into the machine (Ogasawara & Kono, 2017). The use of the time stand protocol, the time used for processing of the data and information needs to be calculated. Thus helps in entering into the network layer of the virtual machine and breach data and information from the cache memory. A hidden channel attack need two virtual machines that have been residing on the same physical host. However, in across virtual machine attack, an alternative place of malicious behavior of virtual machine on the physical host of the victim.
Mitigation techniques for hide channel attacks have been divided into three classes according to the enforcement layer in infrastructures including application system and hardware. There have been various approaches to the development of several models for security of the virtual machines from performance model.
Application based approaches: Design oriented solutions helps in enhancing SCA resistance of ciphers. Robust and constant-time algorithms helps in eliminating SCAs under timing (Sgandurra & Lupu, 2016). There is a constant time implementation that can be used for providing instruction with a specific time routine. This might help in mitigating risks in hidden channel attack. Correlations can be avoided by removing branches and loops depending on secret input data. Masking cryptographic algorithm inputs can be possible by randomization techniques (Annapoorani, Srinivasan & Mylavathi, 2018). Time padding is a technique for timing SCA mitigation with the introduction of delay in function for hiding their time leaks. Key-dependent control flow and dataflow need to be main cause of timing variations and correlation among secret data and time of execution.
System based Approaches: Reducing at operating system and hypervisor levels have been a proper choice fir lending proper existing cloud infrastructures with little changes. The use of the system approaches might help in maintaining a different approach in retaining the challenges in the hidden channel attacks in the hypervisor (Jin et al., 2015). All attacks are focused on the secret key of the cryptography system. Among all the attacks in the cryptography, hidden channel attacks have been the most dangerous attacks. This type of attack require access to the virtual machine encryption operations. The use of hypervisor have been maintain the mitigating strategies from the challenges and threats of hidden channel attacks. Time padding helps in ensuring the execution time of the protected function. This countermeasure has been developed in maintaining a keen approach in the development of the strategies to mitigate hidden channel attacks in the hypervisor.
Conclusion and future trends
Various cryptographic algorithms have been used in order to maintain the security of the systems (Irazoqui & Guo, 2017). This approach has been scheduled with different threads that can be helping in the executing performance counters. All attacks are focused on the secret key of the cryptography system. Among all the attacks in the cryptography, hidden channel attacks have been the most dangerous attacks. Various applications have various execution time and allowing attackers to read these time. Cache line locking system has been an OS mechanism for preventing cache based SCAs in the cloud. Using processor with exclusive cache of possible for inclusive caches that are widely exploited by hackers for performing SCAs. However, Intel SGX does not protect against side-channel attacks as content of memory lines protected by Intel SGX.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that use of virtual machine have been helping in enhancing the efficiency of computing resources. Virtual machine or hypervisor has been creating opportunities for parallel tasking of the computing resources. All attacks are focused on the secret key of the cryptography system. Among all the attacks in the cryptography, hidden channel attacks have been the most dangerous attacks However, there have been some security threats involved in the hypervisor including hidden channel attacks. Risks involved in the hidden channel attacks have been discussed in the report. Risks have been identified in the report for the preparing strategies to mitigate them. Various applications have various execution time and allowing attackers to read these time. This type of attack require access to the virtual machine encryption operations. Proper analysis of the risks have been done in the report. Mitigation strategies for hidden channel attacks have been provided in the report.
The researcher might look for an alternatives for mitigating strategies of hidden channel attacks. There might be further deep studies on the hidden channel attacks in the hypervisor and mitigating strategies might be prepared. Risks analysis management might be done for analyzing the severity of the risks involved in the hypervisor or virtual machine.
References
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Ibrahim, A. S., Hamlyn-Harris, J., & Grundy, J. (2016). Emerging security challenges of cloud virtual infrastructure. arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.09059.
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