Authors:
M. Noorafiza
1
;
H. Maeda
2
;
R. Uda
2
;
T. Kinoshita
2
and
M. Shiratori
2
Affiliations:
1
Tokyo University of Technology and National Defence University of Malaysia, Japan
;
2
Tokyo University of Technology, Japan
Keyword(s):
Vulnerability, Security, Privacy, Malware, Virtual Machine, Cloud Computing.
Abstract:
Virtualization is the main underlying technology for cloud computing. The popularity of cloud computing
had expanded rapidly over the past few years. As any new technology advancement, cloud computing also
has vulnerability possibilities and potential security risks. Therefore it is important to study and understand
the underlying technologies in cloud computing and test any possible loophole that may give advantages for
malware and attackers. Virtual machine (VM) is one of the basic component in cloud computing. VM itself
is a program that executes multiple operating systems on one physical machine. Due to the complexity of
the VM, together with the complex setting of the network environment and physical machine technology
during the implementation of VM environment, vulnerability in the environment may occur. For example,
the ability of malware to detect either the environment that they are attacking is on VM or not. Through this
detection, the malware or attackers may hide its mal
icious program since VM are commonly used as
defensive system for malware detection, such as honeypots. In this paper, we present a remote detection
technique for VM that uses IP timestamp option in full virtualization that could be used to detect VM
environment and contributing to VM vulnerability. Evaluation of this technique was done by examining and
analysing the characteristic of IP packet timestamps replies from VM and real machine. This research
finding could serve as new knowledge for further studies on how to provide comprehensive protection from
VM vulnerability. This research also could formulate more effective security improvement that could lead
to better security policy towards VM technology.
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