Virtual machines image protection in Cloud computing

Muhammad Kazim (2011-NUST-MSCCS-23)

Thesis Supervisor:

Dr. Muhammad Awais Shibli

G.E.C Members:

Dr. Abdul Ghafoor Abbasi

Dr. Hamid Mukhtar

Ms. Rahat Masood

Agenda• Introduction• Motivation• Research Methodology• Problem Statement• Research Contributions• Implementation• Results• Conclusion

Introduction

The core of Cloud services, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model provides the capability to provision;

• Processing• Storage• Networks

IaaS

PaaS

SaaS

Virtualization• In Cloud computing, Virtualization is the basis of providing

IaaS.

• A single system can concurrently run multiple isolated virtual machines (VMs), operating systems or multiple instances of a single operating system (OS).

• Virtualization maximizes the jobs a single CPU can do.

• Organizations are using virtualization to gain efficiency in platform and application hosting

Virtualization in Cloud

Figure 1: Virtualization in Cloud

Virtual Disk Image • A single file or directory representing the hard drive of a

guest operating system.

• Encapsulates all components of a guest OS, including the applications and virtual resources used by guest OS.

• Provides the ability to quickly launch and deploy virtual machines across various hosts.

Motivation• According to a survey, virtualization security is most

important security issue in Cloud.

• NIST, CSA and PCI DSS in their security guidelines for virtualization have emphasized the importance of virtualization and disk images security.

• Disk images in storage can be compromised through attacks such as data leakage, malware installation on images and snapshot access in storage.

Problem StatementVirtual machine images are vulnerable to different attacks in Cloud storage. In order to secure virtual machines images from infrastructure, hypervisor and storage attacks, we have proposed a security mechanism that encrypts virtual machines images during storage.

Research Methodology

Problem Statement

Analysis of virtualization

security

Framework Implementation

Testing Design Framework

Literature Survey

Research Publication

Research Publication

Contributions• Theoretical (Two Research Publications)

• Practical (Development of OpenStack Disk Image Encryption framework)

Conference Paper 1Muhammad Kazim, Rahat Masood, Muhammad Awais Shibli, Abdul Ghafoor Abbasi, “Security Aspects of Virtualization in Cloud Computing”, 12th International Conference on Computer Information Systems and Industrial Management Applications, Krakow-Poland 2013, September 25-27.

http://home.agh.edu.pl/~saeed/cisim2013/

Conference Paper 2

Muhammad Kazim, Rahat Masood, Muhammad Awais Shibli, “Securing the virtual machine images in Cloud computing”, 6th International Conference on Security of Information and Networks (SIN 2013), ACM, November 26-28, 2013, Aksaray/Turkey.

http://sinconf.org/sin2013/index.php

Virtual Machines

Requirements Attacks Solutions

Isolation between virtual machines should be properly implemented

Malicious programs use covert channels to communicate with other VMs in unauthorized way

Vigilant can monitor faults in guest OS of VM

Update the OS regularly and use anti-virus software, secure internet and restrict remote access

Malicious programs can monitor traffic, steal critical data, and tampering the functionality of VMs

Security features such as firewall, HIPS, log monitoring must be provided in guest OS

Securely boot the guest VMs

Attacker can tamper boot process of guest VMs

Security protocol by J. Kong can be to ensure secure boot of guest VMs

There must be limit on VMs resource usage

Using a malicious VM to consume extra resources of the system, resulting in DOS attack

Administrator must deploy a software or application that limits VMs to use authorized resources

Disk ImagesRequirements Attacks Solutions

Saved image state must not be tampered by hypervisor

Attacker can compromise the integrity and confidentiality of the saved state of image

Use encryption and hashing of images before saving them

Snapshot access must be prevented from authorized access

VM checkpoint attacks Checkpoint attacks can be prevented by encrypting the checkpoints using SPARC

Apply updates and patches to maintain images secure

Old images are vulnerable to zero day attacks

Nuwa is a tool designed to apply efficient patching to VM images in Cloud

Backup of the virtual machines images must bemaintained

Unauthorized access to the backup data can result in leakage of sensitiveinformation

Backup of VM images must be encrypted. If any VM is removed then its backup must also be removed

Implementation Perspective• Implement a framework that that ensures confidentiality of

images through encryption

• Images are decrypted when required by the VM

• Use of hashing techniques to ensure integrity

OpenStack

• Used in 178 different countries and more than 850 organizations including NASA, Rackspace,

• Collection of open source components• Modular design• IaaS Cloud Services allows users to manage: VMs, Virtual

networks, storage resources

OpenStack Components• Swift• Glance• Nova• Horizon• Keystone• Quantum• Cinder

18

Virtual Machines in OpenStack

OpenStack Swift Architecture• Swift is a highly available, distributed, eventually

consistent object/blob store.

• Is maintained and developed by one of the largest open-source teams in the world, and is in the top 2% of all project teams on Ohloh.

• Has 53,605 lines of code and is written in Python.

Components• Proxy Servers: Handles all incoming API requests.• Rings: Maps logical names of data to locations on

particular disks.• Accounts & Containers: Each Account and Container

are individual databases that are distributed across the cluster. An Account database contains the list of Containers in that Account. A Container database contains the list of Objects in that Container

• Objects: The data itself.• Partitions: A Partition stores Objects, Account databases

and Container databases.

Image Encryption Module In Swift

1. PUT Request 2. Upload Image as Object 2. EDIC intercepts

(Request to store image)

3. Intercept image 5. Store encrypted image store request

3. Key Request

4.Key exchange

5. Encrypt Image by AES-256

Glance Swift Proxy

Image Encryption

Module (IEM)

Key Management Server

Swift Object

Image Decryption Module In Swift

1. GET Request 2. Download Image as Object 2. EDIC intercepts

(Request to access image)

3. Intercept image 6. Download encrypted image access request

3. Key Request

4.Key exchange

5. Decrypt Image by AES-256

Glance Swift Proxy

Image Decryption

Module (IDM)

Key Management Server

Swift Object

23

IEM & IDM

IEM & IDM

Deployment of OpenStack for development

• Devstack • A documented shell script to build complete OpenStack development

environments.

• Deployment of Devstack• Setup a fresh supported Linux installation• Clone devstack from devstack• Deploy your OpenStack Cloud

http://devstack.org/

Debugging of source code• Debugging of Swift through command line

Pdb (Python debugger)

Integration of Image Encryption and Decryption with Swift

• Integrating Image encryption and decryption with OpenStack Swift image storage.• OpenStack Swift API is implemented as a set of ReSTful web

services • The proxy server initiates an internal Swift PUT request to the

object servers • Object servers processes images chunk by chunk so each chunk

gets encrypted• Foe decryption object server decrypts each chunk before it sends

the image to the proxy server

Demo • Running Devstack script• Add an image• Show it in Storage• Run a VM on it (it gets decrypted)

Results• Add a custom bootable image• Launch a VM• After VM termination, image is located into Swift encrypted

storage• After VM termination, image is stored in encrypted state in

Swift.• AES is block sized encryption, that adds extra padding to

images• Encryption of images maintains their confidentiality in Cloud

storage• Hash of image is taken before encryption. During decryption

hash of image is calculated again, and compared with the original hash to ensure integrity of image.

Future Directions• Encryption of accounts to protect users and images lists in

Swift.

• Integration of Key Management protocol with Swift image encryption.

• Encryption of persistent storage used by virtual machines during execution.

Conclusion• Image encryption module encrypts all virtual disk images

before storage in OpenStack. They are decrypted when required by the virtual machine.

• Integrity and confidentiality of virtual machine images in storage is ensured. They are secure from all possible storage attacks such as data theft, malware installation and hypervisor issues.

References[1] Shubhashis Sengupta, Vikrant Kaulgud, Vibhu Saujanya Sharma, “Cloud Computing Security -

Trends and Research Directions”, IEEE World Congress on Services, Washington, DC, USA, 2011.

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