Hadoop Distributed File System Security Challenges and Examination of Unauthorized Access Issue

Abstract

Hadoop technology is followed by some security issues. At its beginnings, developers paid attention to the development of basic functionalities mostly, and proposal of security components was not of prime interest. Because of that, the technology remained vulnerable to malicious activities of unauthorized users whose purpose is to endanger system functionalities or to compromise private user data. Researchers and developers are continuously trying to solve these issues by upgrading Hadoop’s security mechanisms and preventing undesirable malicious activities. In this paper, the most common HDFS security problems and a review of unauthorized access issues are presented. First, Hadoop mechanism and its main components are described as the introduction part of the leading research problem. Then, HDFS architecture is given, and all including components and functionalities are introduced. Further, all possible types of users are listed with an accent on unauthorized users, which are of great importance for the paper. One part of the research is dedicated to the consideration of Hadoop security levels, environment and user assessments. The review also includes an explanation of Log Monitoring and Audit features, and detail consideration of authorization and authentication issues. Possible consequences of unauthorized access to a system are covered, and a few recommendations for solving problems of unauthorized access are offered. Honeypot nodes, security mechanisms for collecting valuable information about malicious parties, are presented in the last part of the paper. Finally, the idea for developing a new type of Intrusion Detector, which will be based on using an artificial neural network, is presented. The detector will be an integral part of a new kind of virtual honeypot mechanism and represents the initial base for future scientific work of authors.