Cloud Vulnerabilities

Prof comments:

1. Look into security and privacy issues of cloud computing (team comment: select a sub-bullet from the recommendations from below and amplify)

2. Review existing security mechanisms and analyze the pros and cons of them

3. Propose what you believe to be the better

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Section 1 - Security:

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Security Challenges in Cloud Computing |

The technological vulnerabilities related to cloud computing environments generally fall into one or more of four categories of vulnerability: Data Storage, Data Transmission, Hypervisor and Application, Trust and Visibility of Third-Party Resources and Practices. Additionally, cloud computing resources can be abused and leveraged by attackers against their targets.

Highlighted sections are recommended areas for further research/discussion.

Data Storage Vulnerability

* Seizure / Physical Access / Jurisdiction

* Unknown personnel may have access to or legal authority to read, modify, or seize data storage equipment

* Media Sanitization

* Shared or reused media might not be properly sanitized before being made available for others to access

* Dealing with Classified Spills is a significant challenge

* Data Stored Un-encrypted

* Data, credentials, code, or virtual machines might be stored unencrypted in recovery blocks or caches

Data Transmission Vulnerability

* Session Hijacking/Stealing; Cross-Site Request Forgery (XSRF) / Session Riding

* Valid management sessions might be used to grant attacker unauthorized access

* Exposure of operations due to cloud mission applications activities being subjected to Traffic Flow Analysis (TFA)

* Traffic Capture (Sniffing)

* Network traffic traversing virtual and actual networks might be accessible to others

* Man-in-the-Middle (MITM) attacks

* Management channels which traverse the internet may be intercepted

Hypervisor and...