Attacking Data Center Networks from the Inside

Abstract

The shared nature of public-cloud data-center networks exposes co-hosted tenants to attacks launched from inside the network. This report evaluates security mechanisms offered by cloud providers and explores internal denial-of-service vulnerabilities. It describes overt attacks that are easy to mount but recognizable and covert attacks that are harder to detect and can have greater impact. It then discusses mitigations based on TCP pacing and network virtualization and proposes a source-based filtering scheme for regulating network communication.

BibTeX

@article{attacking-dcn,
  title = {{Attacking Data Center Networks from the Inside}},
  author = {Khandelwal, Anurag and Jain, Navendu and Kamara, Seny},
  journal = {Microsoft Research Technical Report},
  month = dec,
  year = {2015}
}