The vAMP Attack: Taking Control of Cloud Systems via the Unified Packet Parser

Kashyap Thimmaraju; Bhargava Shastry; Tobias Fiebig; Felicitas Hetzelt; Jean-Pierre Seifert; Anja Feldmann; Stefan Schmid

doi:10.1145/3140649.3140651

The vAMP Attack: Taking Control of Cloud Systems via the Unified Packet Parser

Kashyap Thimmaraju, Bhargava Shastry, Tobias Fiebig, Felicitas Hetzelt, Jean-Pierre Seifert, Anja Feldmann, Stefan Schmid

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volume › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Virtual switches are a crucial component of cloud operating systems that interconnect virtual machines in a flexible manner. They implement complex network protocol parsing in the unified packet parser - parsing all supported packet header fields in a single pass - and are commonly co-located with the virtualization layer. We find that this significantly reduces the barrier for low-budget attackers to launch high impact attacks in the cloud. This leads us to introduce the virtual switch attacker model for packet-parsing, in short the vAMP attack. Using OpenStack, a cloud operating system, and Open vSwitch, a virtual switch, we demonstrate how current virtual switch designs cannot withstand vAMP. Thereby giving a weak attacker full control of the cloud in a matter of minutes

The vAMP Attack: Taking Control of Cloud Systems via the Unified Packet Parser | Request PDF. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320745119_The_vAMP_Attack_Taking_Control_of_Cloud_Systems_via_the_Unified_Packet_Parser [accessed Mar 14 2018].

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 9th Cloud Computing Security Workshop 2017
Subtitle of host publication	ACM CCSW 2017
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages	11-15
Number of pages	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3140649.3140651
Publication status	Published - 2017

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@inproceedings{c929837ac5e446c38c6cadf7e66b4fae,

title = "The vAMP Attack: Taking Control of Cloud Systems via the Unified Packet Parser",

abstract = "Virtual switches are a crucial component of cloud operating systems that interconnect virtual machines in a flexible manner. They implement complex network protocol parsing in the unified packet parser - parsing all supported packet header fields in a single pass - and are commonly co-located with the virtualization layer. We find that this significantly reduces the barrier for low-budget attackers to launch high impact attacks in the cloud. This leads us to introduce the virtual switch attacker model for packet-parsing, in short the vAMP attack. Using OpenStack, a cloud operating system, and Open vSwitch, a virtual switch, we demonstrate how current virtual switch designs cannot withstand vAMP. Thereby giving a weak attacker full control of the cloud in a matter of minutes The vAMP Attack: Taking Control of Cloud Systems via the Unified Packet Parser | Request PDF. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320745119_The_vAMP_Attack_Taking_Control_of_Cloud_Systems_via_the_Unified_Packet_Parser [accessed Mar 14 2018].",

author = "Kashyap Thimmaraju and Bhargava Shastry and Tobias Fiebig and Felicitas Hetzelt and Jean-Pierre Seifert and Anja Feldmann and Stefan Schmid",

year = "2017",

doi = "10.1145/3140649.3140651",

language = "English",

pages = "11--15",

booktitle = "Proceedings of the 9th Cloud Computing Security Workshop 2017",

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The vAMP Attack: Taking Control of Cloud Systems via the Unified Packet Parser. / Thimmaraju, Kashyap; Shastry, Bhargava; Fiebig, Tobias et al.
Proceedings of the 9th Cloud Computing Security Workshop 2017: ACM CCSW 2017. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2017. p. 11-15.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volume › Conference contribution › Scientific › peer-review

TY - GEN

T1 - The vAMP Attack: Taking Control of Cloud Systems via the Unified Packet Parser

AU - Thimmaraju, Kashyap

AU - Shastry, Bhargava

AU - Fiebig, Tobias

AU - Hetzelt, Felicitas

AU - Seifert, Jean-Pierre

AU - Feldmann, Anja

AU - Schmid, Stefan

PY - 2017

Y1 - 2017

N2 - Virtual switches are a crucial component of cloud operating systems that interconnect virtual machines in a flexible manner. They implement complex network protocol parsing in the unified packet parser - parsing all supported packet header fields in a single pass - and are commonly co-located with the virtualization layer. We find that this significantly reduces the barrier for low-budget attackers to launch high impact attacks in the cloud. This leads us to introduce the virtual switch attacker model for packet-parsing, in short the vAMP attack. Using OpenStack, a cloud operating system, and Open vSwitch, a virtual switch, we demonstrate how current virtual switch designs cannot withstand vAMP. Thereby giving a weak attacker full control of the cloud in a matter of minutes The vAMP Attack: Taking Control of Cloud Systems via the Unified Packet Parser | Request PDF. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320745119_The_vAMP_Attack_Taking_Control_of_Cloud_Systems_via_the_Unified_Packet_Parser [accessed Mar 14 2018].

AB - Virtual switches are a crucial component of cloud operating systems that interconnect virtual machines in a flexible manner. They implement complex network protocol parsing in the unified packet parser - parsing all supported packet header fields in a single pass - and are commonly co-located with the virtualization layer. We find that this significantly reduces the barrier for low-budget attackers to launch high impact attacks in the cloud. This leads us to introduce the virtual switch attacker model for packet-parsing, in short the vAMP attack. Using OpenStack, a cloud operating system, and Open vSwitch, a virtual switch, we demonstrate how current virtual switch designs cannot withstand vAMP. Thereby giving a weak attacker full control of the cloud in a matter of minutes The vAMP Attack: Taking Control of Cloud Systems via the Unified Packet Parser | Request PDF. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320745119_The_vAMP_Attack_Taking_Control_of_Cloud_Systems_via_the_Unified_Packet_Parser [accessed Mar 14 2018].

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BT - Proceedings of the 9th Cloud Computing Security Workshop 2017

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The vAMP Attack: Taking Control of Cloud Systems via the Unified Packet Parser

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