Virtualization vulnerabilities, security issues, and solutions: Virtualization is technological revolution that separates functions from underlying hardware and allows us to create useful environment from abstract resources. Virtualization technology has been targeted by attackers for malicious activity. Attackers could compromise VM infrastructures, allowing them to access other VMs on the same system and even the host. This presentation emphasize on the assessment of virtualization specific vulnerabilities, security issues and possible solutions. By-Nitish Awasthi B.Tech.CTIS Invertis University Bareilly

1. Virtualization vulnerabilities, security issues,
and solutions
VIRTUALIZATION SECURITY
THREATS IN
CLOUD COMPUTING
Vulnerabilities Security Issues And Solutions

2. What is Virtualization?
Cloud Computing, Virtualization means to
create a virtual version of a device or resources.
Where the framework divides the resources
into one or more execution environment.

3. Why you Should Care?
Fewer Physical Machines
Lowered CAPEX
Centralized Management
Higher Utilization
Minimized or Eliminate Downtime

4. How does virtualization work in cloud computing?
Hypervisor software is the secret sauce that makes virtualization
possible.
_______________________________________________________

5. Hypervisor Types-

6. Welcoming Greater flexibility leads to potentially
large security risks

7. The Security Risks of Virtualization
In a Virtualized environment, each of the VMs is detached from
the rest of the system by the hypervisor or Virtual Machine
Monitor (VMM).
A Strong accomplishment can break this confinement and thus
point to various concerns respecting the Confidentiality, Integrity,
Or Availability of the VMs.

8. Virtualization Security Issues
VM escape- Enables a hacker/cracker to gain access to the primary
hypervisor and its created virtual machines.
Hyperjacking- Hacker takes malicious control over the hypervisor that
creates the virtual environment within a virtual machine (VM)
host.
VM sprawl- When the large number of virtual machines exist in the
environment without proper management.

9. Virtualization Security Issues
VM footprint
Used for gathering information about target VM like
OS installed, packages installed and services running
etc.
Inside-VM attack VM can get infected with malware or OS rootkits at run-
time.
Outside-VM attack
Attacks from the host OS and co-located VMs are known
as outside-VM attacks.

10. Virtualization Security Issues
Cross VM side
channel
To maximize resource utilization, multiple VMs are
usually placed on the same physical server in the
cloud environment. The basic idea is a malicious VM
penetrates the isolation between VMs, and then
access the shared hardware and cache locations to
extract confidential information from the target.

11. Virtualization Security Issues
Oudated SW
packages in VMs
Outdated software packages in virtual machines can
pose serious security threats in the virtualized
environment. Because of the low cost and the ease of
creation, users tend to create new virtual machines for
different tasks, branch new virtual machines based on
the old ones, snapshot machines or even rollback
machines to an earlier state.

12. Virtualization security measures amd requirements
In order to protect the virtualization environment in the cloud, the authority
must implement definite security measures.
The following measures must be endorsed for a secure cloud execution.
Protected network
Deactivating the non-essential features
Detach unutilized hardware devices
Backup of VM images
Hardened Configuration.
Patch Management
Intrusion Detection System.

13. Cloud Shared Responsibility model
Cloud Always comes as a shared responsibility model between a cloud service
provider and cloud customers.
Cloud
Service
Provider
Cloud
Service
Customer
Cloud Shared Responsibility Model

14. Conclusion
 Virtualization involves the use of encapsulating software layer (Hypervisor or
Virtual Machine Monitor) which surrounds or underlies an operating system
and provides the same input, outputs, and behavior that would be expected
from an actual physical device.
 Virtualized systems introduce important security gaps that need to be taken
into account when deploying strong and secure virtualized infrastructure.
 Cloud Virtualization environment can be compromised by different attacks at
hypervisor, virtual machines and VM images.
 We have identified attack scenarios at these components and different
existing security schemes that provide security to virtualization.

15. List of References/Bibliography
• Virtualization vulnerabilities, security issues, and solutions:
A critical study and comparison
Darshan Tank . Akshai Aggarwal . Nirbhay Chaubey
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41870-019-00294
© Bharati Vidyapeeth’s Institute of Computer Applications and Management 2019
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