Matching Items (7)
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- All Subjects: network security
- Creators: Huang, Dijiang
Description
Cloud computing is regarded as one of the most revolutionary technologies in the past decades. It provides scalable, flexible and secure resource provisioning services, which is also the reason why users prefer to migrate their locally processing workloads onto remote clouds. Besides commercial cloud system (i.e., Amazon EC2), ProtoGENI and PlanetLab have further improved the current Internet-based resource provisioning system by allowing end users to construct a virtual networking environment. By archiving the similar goal but with more flexible and efficient performance, I present the design and implementation of MobiCloud that is a geo-distributed mobile cloud computing platform, and G-PLaNE that focuses on how to construct the virtual networking environment upon the self-designed resource provisioning system consisting of multiple geo-distributed clusters. Furthermore, I conduct a comprehensive study to layout existing Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) service models and corresponding representative related work. A new user-centric mobile cloud computing service model is proposed to advance the existing mobile cloud computing research.
After building the MobiCloud, G-PLaNE and studying the MCC model, I have been using Software Defined Networking (SDN) approaches to enhance the system security in the cloud virtual networking environment. I present an OpenFlow based IPS solution called SDNIPS that includes a new IPS architecture based on Open vSwitch (OVS) in the cloud software-based networking environment. It is enabled with elasticity service provisioning and Network Reconfiguration (NR) features based on POX controller. Finally, SDNIPS demonstrates the feasibility and shows more efficiency than traditional approaches through a thorough evaluation.
At last, I propose an OpenFlow-based defensive module composition framework called CloudArmour that is able to perform query, aggregation, analysis, and control function over distributed OpenFlow-enabled devices. I propose several modules and use the DDoS attack as an example to illustrate how to composite the comprehensive defensive solution based on CloudArmour framework. I introduce total 20 Python-based CloudArmour APIs. Finally, evaluation results prove the feasibility and efficiency of CloudArmour framework.
After building the MobiCloud, G-PLaNE and studying the MCC model, I have been using Software Defined Networking (SDN) approaches to enhance the system security in the cloud virtual networking environment. I present an OpenFlow based IPS solution called SDNIPS that includes a new IPS architecture based on Open vSwitch (OVS) in the cloud software-based networking environment. It is enabled with elasticity service provisioning and Network Reconfiguration (NR) features based on POX controller. Finally, SDNIPS demonstrates the feasibility and shows more efficiency than traditional approaches through a thorough evaluation.
At last, I propose an OpenFlow-based defensive module composition framework called CloudArmour that is able to perform query, aggregation, analysis, and control function over distributed OpenFlow-enabled devices. I propose several modules and use the DDoS attack as an example to illustrate how to composite the comprehensive defensive solution based on CloudArmour framework. I introduce total 20 Python-based CloudArmour APIs. Finally, evaluation results prove the feasibility and efficiency of CloudArmour framework.
ContributorsXing, Tianyi (Author) / Huang, Dijiang (Thesis advisor) / Xue, Guoliang (Committee member) / Sen, Arunabha (Committee member) / Medhi, Deepankar (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This thesis proposed a novel approach to establish the trust model in a social network scenario based on users' emails. Email is one of the most important social connections nowadays. By analyzing email exchange activities among users, a social network trust model can be established to judge the trust rate between each two users. The whole trust checking process is divided into two steps: local checking and remote checking. Local checking directly contacts the email server to calculate the trust rate based on user's own email communication history. Remote checking is a distributed computing process to get help from user's social network friends and built the trust rate together. The email-based trust model is built upon a cloud computing framework called MobiCloud. Inside MobiCloud, each user occupies a virtual machine which can directly communicate with others. Based on this feature, the distributed trust model is implemented as a combination of local analysis and remote analysis in the cloud. Experiment results show that the trust evaluation model can give accurate trust rate even in a small scale social network which does not have lots of social connections. With this trust model, the security in both social network services and email communication could be improved.
ContributorsZhong, Yunji (Author) / Huang, Dijiang (Thesis advisor) / Dasgupta, Partha (Committee member) / Syrotiuk, Violet (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Cloud computing is known as a new and powerful computing paradigm. This new generation of network computing model delivers both software and hardware as on-demand resources and various services over the Internet. However, the security concerns prevent users from adopting the cloud-based solutions to fulfill the IT requirement for many business critical computing. Due to the resource-sharing and multi-tenant nature of cloud-based solutions, cloud security is especially the most concern in the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). It has been attracting a lot of research and development effort in the past few years.
Virtualization is the main technology of cloud computing to enable multi-tenancy.
Computing power, storage, and network are all virtualizable to be shared in an IaaS system. This important technology makes abstract infrastructure and resources available to users as isolated virtual machines (VMs) and virtual networks (VNs). However, it also increases vulnerabilities and possible attack surfaces in the system, since all users in a cloud share these resources with others or even the attackers. The promising protection mechanism is required to ensure strong isolation, mediated sharing, and secure communications between VMs. Technologies for detecting anomalous traffic and protecting normal traffic in VNs are also needed. Therefore, how to secure and protect the private traffic in VNs and how to prevent the malicious traffic from shared resources are major security research challenges in a cloud system.
This dissertation proposes four novel frameworks to address challenges mentioned above. The first work is a new multi-phase distributed vulnerability, measurement, and countermeasure selection mechanism based on the attack graph analytical model. The second work is a hybrid intrusion detection and prevention system to protect VN and VM using virtual machines introspection (VMI) and software defined networking (SDN) technologies. The third work further improves the previous works by introducing a VM profiler and VM Security Index (VSI) to keep track the security status of each VM and suggest the optimal countermeasure to mitigate potential threats. The final work is a SDN-based proactive defense mechanism for a cloud system using a reconfiguration model and moving target defense approaches to actively and dynamically change the virtual network configuration of a cloud system.
Virtualization is the main technology of cloud computing to enable multi-tenancy.
Computing power, storage, and network are all virtualizable to be shared in an IaaS system. This important technology makes abstract infrastructure and resources available to users as isolated virtual machines (VMs) and virtual networks (VNs). However, it also increases vulnerabilities and possible attack surfaces in the system, since all users in a cloud share these resources with others or even the attackers. The promising protection mechanism is required to ensure strong isolation, mediated sharing, and secure communications between VMs. Technologies for detecting anomalous traffic and protecting normal traffic in VNs are also needed. Therefore, how to secure and protect the private traffic in VNs and how to prevent the malicious traffic from shared resources are major security research challenges in a cloud system.
This dissertation proposes four novel frameworks to address challenges mentioned above. The first work is a new multi-phase distributed vulnerability, measurement, and countermeasure selection mechanism based on the attack graph analytical model. The second work is a hybrid intrusion detection and prevention system to protect VN and VM using virtual machines introspection (VMI) and software defined networking (SDN) technologies. The third work further improves the previous works by introducing a VM profiler and VM Security Index (VSI) to keep track the security status of each VM and suggest the optimal countermeasure to mitigate potential threats. The final work is a SDN-based proactive defense mechanism for a cloud system using a reconfiguration model and moving target defense approaches to actively and dynamically change the virtual network configuration of a cloud system.
ContributorsChung, Chun-Jen (Author) / Huang, Dijiang (Thesis advisor) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Committee member) / Xue, Guoliang (Committee member) / Zhang, Yanchao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
The increasing usage of smart-phones and mobile devices in work environment and IT
industry has brought about unique set of challenges and opportunities. ARM architecture
in particular has evolved to a point where it supports implementations across wide spectrum
of performance points and ARM based tablets and smart-phones are in demand. The
enhancements to basic ARM RISC architecture allow ARM to have high performance,
small code size, low power consumption and small silicon area. Users want their devices to
perform many tasks such as read email, play games, and run other online applications and
organizations no longer desire to provision and maintain individual’s IT equipment. The
term BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has come into being from demand of such a work
setup and is one of the motivation of this research work. It brings many opportunities such
as increased productivity and reduced costs and challenges such as secured data access,
data leakage and amount of control by the organization.
To provision such a framework we need to bridge the gap from both organizations side
and individuals point of view. Mobile device users face issue of application delivery on
multiple platforms. For instance having purchased many applications from one proprietary
application store, individuals may want to move them to a different platform/device but
currently this is not possible. Organizations face security issues in providing such a solution
as there are many potential threats from allowing BYOD work-style such as unauthorized
access to data, attacks from the devices within and outside the network.
ARM based Secure Mobile SDN framework will resolve these issues and enable employees
to consolidate both personal and business calls and mobile data access on a single device.
To address application delivery issue we are introducing KVM based virtualization that
will allow host OS to run multiple guest OS. To address the security problem we introduce
SDN environment where host would be running bridged network of guest OS using Open
vSwitch . This would allow a remote controller to monitor the state of guest OS for making
important control and traffic flow decisions based on the situation.
industry has brought about unique set of challenges and opportunities. ARM architecture
in particular has evolved to a point where it supports implementations across wide spectrum
of performance points and ARM based tablets and smart-phones are in demand. The
enhancements to basic ARM RISC architecture allow ARM to have high performance,
small code size, low power consumption and small silicon area. Users want their devices to
perform many tasks such as read email, play games, and run other online applications and
organizations no longer desire to provision and maintain individual’s IT equipment. The
term BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has come into being from demand of such a work
setup and is one of the motivation of this research work. It brings many opportunities such
as increased productivity and reduced costs and challenges such as secured data access,
data leakage and amount of control by the organization.
To provision such a framework we need to bridge the gap from both organizations side
and individuals point of view. Mobile device users face issue of application delivery on
multiple platforms. For instance having purchased many applications from one proprietary
application store, individuals may want to move them to a different platform/device but
currently this is not possible. Organizations face security issues in providing such a solution
as there are many potential threats from allowing BYOD work-style such as unauthorized
access to data, attacks from the devices within and outside the network.
ARM based Secure Mobile SDN framework will resolve these issues and enable employees
to consolidate both personal and business calls and mobile data access on a single device.
To address application delivery issue we are introducing KVM based virtualization that
will allow host OS to run multiple guest OS. To address the security problem we introduce
SDN environment where host would be running bridged network of guest OS using Open
vSwitch . This would allow a remote controller to monitor the state of guest OS for making
important control and traffic flow decisions based on the situation.
ContributorsChowdhary, Ankur (Author) / Huang, Dijiang (Thesis advisor) / Tong, Hanghang (Committee member) / Davulcu, Hasan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging network paradigm that decouples the control plane from the data plane, which allows network administrators to consolidate common network services into a centralized module named SDN controller. Applications’ policies are transformed into standardized network rules in the data plane via SDN controller. Even though this centralization brings a great flexibility and programmability to the network, network rules generated by SDN applications cannot be trusted because there may exist malicious SDN applications, and insecure network flows can be made due to complex relations across network rules. In this dissertation, I investigate how to identify and resolve these security violations in SDN caused by the combination of network rules and applications’ policies. To this end, I propose a systematic policy management framework that better protects SDN itself and hardens existing network defense mechanisms using SDN.
More specifically, I discuss the following four security challenges in this dissertation: (1) In SDN, generating reliable network rules is challenging because SDN applications cannot be trusted and have complicated dependencies each other. To address this problem, I analyze applications’ policies and remove those dependencies by applying grid-based policy decomposition mechanism; (2) One network rule could accidentally affect others (or by malicious users), which lead to creating of indirect security violations. I build systematic and automated tools that analyze network rules in the data plane to detect a wide range of security violations and resolve them in an automated fashion; (3) A fundamental limitation of current SDN protocol (OpenFlow) is a lack of statefulness, which is extremely important to several security applications such as stateful firewall. To bring statelessness to SDN-based environment, I come up with an innovative stateful monitoring scheme by extending existing OpenFlow specifications; (4) Existing honeynet architecture is suffering from its limited functionalities of ’data control’ and ’data capture’. To address this challenge, I design and implement an innovative next generation SDN-based honeynet architecture.
More specifically, I discuss the following four security challenges in this dissertation: (1) In SDN, generating reliable network rules is challenging because SDN applications cannot be trusted and have complicated dependencies each other. To address this problem, I analyze applications’ policies and remove those dependencies by applying grid-based policy decomposition mechanism; (2) One network rule could accidentally affect others (or by malicious users), which lead to creating of indirect security violations. I build systematic and automated tools that analyze network rules in the data plane to detect a wide range of security violations and resolve them in an automated fashion; (3) A fundamental limitation of current SDN protocol (OpenFlow) is a lack of statefulness, which is extremely important to several security applications such as stateful firewall. To bring statelessness to SDN-based environment, I come up with an innovative stateful monitoring scheme by extending existing OpenFlow specifications; (4) Existing honeynet architecture is suffering from its limited functionalities of ’data control’ and ’data capture’. To address this challenge, I design and implement an innovative next generation SDN-based honeynet architecture.
ContributorsHan, Wonkyu (Author) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Thesis advisor) / Zhao, Ziming (Thesis advisor) / Doupe, Adam (Committee member) / Huang, Dijiang (Committee member) / Zhang, Yanchao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
The ease of programmability in Software-Defined Networking (SDN) makes it a great platform for implementation of various initiatives that involve application deployment, dynamic topology changes, and decentralized network management in a multi-tenant data center environment. However, implementing security solutions in such an environment is fraught with policy conflicts and consistency issues with the hardness of this problem being affected by the distribution scheme for the SDN controllers.
In this dissertation, a formalism for flow rule conflicts in SDN environments is introduced. This formalism is realized in Brew, a security policy analysis framework implemented on an OpenDaylight SDN controller. Brew has comprehensive conflict detection and resolution modules to ensure that no two flow rules in a distributed SDN-based cloud environment have conflicts at any layer; thereby assuring consistent conflict-free security policy implementation and preventing information leakage. Techniques for global prioritization of flow rules in a decentralized environment are presented, using which all SDN flow rule conflicts are recognized and classified. Strategies for unassisted resolution of these conflicts are also detailed. Alternately, if administrator input is desired to resolve conflicts, a novel visualization scheme is implemented to help the administrators view the conflicts in an aesthetic manner. The correctness, feasibility and scalability of the Brew proof-of-concept prototype is demonstrated. Flow rule conflict avoidance using a buddy address space management technique is studied as an alternate to conflict detection and resolution in highly dynamic cloud systems attempting to implement an SDN-based Moving Target Defense (MTD) countermeasures.
In this dissertation, a formalism for flow rule conflicts in SDN environments is introduced. This formalism is realized in Brew, a security policy analysis framework implemented on an OpenDaylight SDN controller. Brew has comprehensive conflict detection and resolution modules to ensure that no two flow rules in a distributed SDN-based cloud environment have conflicts at any layer; thereby assuring consistent conflict-free security policy implementation and preventing information leakage. Techniques for global prioritization of flow rules in a decentralized environment are presented, using which all SDN flow rule conflicts are recognized and classified. Strategies for unassisted resolution of these conflicts are also detailed. Alternately, if administrator input is desired to resolve conflicts, a novel visualization scheme is implemented to help the administrators view the conflicts in an aesthetic manner. The correctness, feasibility and scalability of the Brew proof-of-concept prototype is demonstrated. Flow rule conflict avoidance using a buddy address space management technique is studied as an alternate to conflict detection and resolution in highly dynamic cloud systems attempting to implement an SDN-based Moving Target Defense (MTD) countermeasures.
ContributorsPisharody, Sandeep (Author) / Huang, Dijiang (Thesis advisor) / Ahn, Gail-Joon (Committee member) / Syrotiuk, Violet (Committee member) / Doupe, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
As automation research into penetration testing has developed, several methods have been proposed as suitable control mechanisms for use in pentesting frameworks. These include Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), partially observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs), and POMDPs utilizing reinforcement learning. Since much work has been done automating other aspects of the pentesting process using exploit frameworks and scanning tools, this is the next focal point in this field. This paper shows a fully-integrated solution comprised of a POMDP-based planning algorithm, the Nessus scanning utility, and MITRE's CALDERA pentesting platform. These are linked in order to create an autonomous AI attack platform with scanning, planning, and attack capabilities.
ContributorsDejarnett, Eric Andrew (Author) / Huang, Dijiang (Thesis director) / Chowdhary, Ankur (Committee member) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05