Assured Cloud Computing

3Risks and Benefits: Game-Theoretical Analysis and Algorithm for Virtual Machine Security Management in the Cloud

Luke Kwiat¹, Charles A. Kamhoua², Kevin A. Kwiat³, and Jian Tang⁴

¹Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

²Network Security Branch, Network Sciences Division, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, MD, USA

³Haloed Sun TEK, Sarasota, FL, USA

⁴Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

The growth of cloud computing has spurred many entities, both small and large, to use cloud services in order to achieve cost savings. Public cloud computing has allowed for quick, dynamic scalability without much overhead or long-term commitments. However, there are some disincentives to using cloud services, and one of the biggest is the inherent and unknown danger stemming from a shared platform – namely, the hypervisor. An attacker who compromises a virtual machine (VM) and then goes on to compromise the hypervisor can readily compromise all virtual machines on that hypervisor. That brings into play the game-theoretic problem of negative externalities, in which the security of one player affects the security of another. Using game theory to model and solve these externalities, we show that there are multiple Nash equilibriums. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the VM allocation type can adversely affect the role that externality plays in the cloud security game. Finally, ...