SCEF: A Model for Prevention of DDoS Attacks From the Cloud

Abstract

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are some of the biggest threats to network performance and security today. With the advent of cloud computing, these attacks can be performed remotely on rented virtual machines (VMs), potentially increasing their capabilities and making them harder to trace and mitigate, and negatively affecting the cloud service provider as well. By analyzing packet transmission statistics, attacks can be detected on a virtual machine monitor (VMM) that controls the behavior of the VMs. This article proposes a solution to stop such detected attacks from the source, and analyses solutions proposed for a few different types of such attacks. The authors propose a model called selective cloud egress filter (SCEF) which implements specific modules to deal with detected attacks. If an attack is detected, the SCEF relays information to the VMM about which VMs are participating in the attack, allowing for specific corrective action.