University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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

Ahmad, Mohammad

Content Files
AHMAD-THESIS-2016.pdf

Permalink

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

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
Date of Ingest
2016-07-07T21:18:08Z
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

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