Adaptive multilevel fuzzy-based authentication framework to mitigate Cache side channel attack in cloud computing

Abstract

Cloud computing supports multitenancy to satisfy the users’ demands for accessing resources and simultaneously it increases revenue for cloud providers. Cloud providers adapt multitenancy by virtualizing the resources, like CPU, network interfaces, peripherals, hard drives and memory using hypervisor to fulfill the demand. In a virtualized environment, many virtual machines (VMs) can run on the same core with the help of the hypervisor by sharing the resources. The VMs running on the same core are the target for the malicious or abnormal attacks like side channel attacks. Among various side channel attacks in cloud computing, cache-based side channel attack is one that leaks private information of the users based on the shared resources. Here, as the shared resource is the cache, a process can utilize the cache usage of another by cache contention. Cache sharing provides a way for the attackers to gain considerable information so that the key used for encryption can be inferred. Discovering this side channel attack is a challenging task. This requires identification of a feature that influences the attack. Even though there are various techniques available in the literature to mitigate such attacks, an effective solution to reduce the cache-based side channel attack is still an issue. Therefore, a novel fuzzy rule-based mechanism is integrated to detect the cache side channel attackers by monitoring the cache data access (CDA). The factor that determines the attack is CDA in a log file created by the framework during authorization. The proposed framework also utilizes certain security properties including ECC and hashing for the privacy preservation and the decision is made with the aid of a fuzzy logic system.