Cauldron: a framework to defend against cache-based side-channel attacks in clouds

Ahmad, Mohammad

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/90967 Copy

Description

Title

Cauldron: a framework to defend against cache-based side-channel attacks in clouds

Author(s)

Ahmad, Mohammad

Issue Date

2016-04-27

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

• Campbell, Roy H.
• Bobba, Rakesh B.

Department of Study

Computer Science

Discipline

Computer Science

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.S.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• Cache-based side-channel attacks
• Cloud computing
• Containers
• Virtualization
• Docker

Abstract

Cache-based side-channel attacks have garnered much interest in recent literature. Such attacks are particularly relevant for cloud computing platforms due to high levels of multi-tenancy. In fact, there exists recent work that demonstrates such attacks on real cloud platforms (e.g., DotCloud). In this thesis we present Cauldron, a framework to defend against such cache-based side-channel attacks. Cauldron uses a combination of smart scheduling techniques and microarchitectural mechanisms to achieve this goal. We are able to demonstrate improved defenses against both cross-core side channel attacks that target shared caches as well as same-core attacks. Furthermore, Cauldron is transparent to the user - requiring no modi cation (or even recompilation) of users' application binaries by integrating directly with the popular container runtime framework, Docker. Preliminary evaluation results show that the proposed approach is effective for cloud computing applications.

Graduation Semester

2016-05

Type of Resource

text

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/90967

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2016 Mohammad Ahmad

Owning Collections