How to hide your VM from the big bad wolf? Co-location resistance vs. resource utilisation in VM placement strategies
Jens Lindemann · 2023
VMs in cloud environments are at threat of attacks from VMs co-located on the same server, e. g. through side-channels. Reducing the ability of attackers to achieve co-location with specific VMs can alleviate the risk of targeted attacks. This paper presents the simulation framework VMPlaceSim, which allows to evaluate resource utilisation and resistance against co-location attacks of VM placement strategies. A new strategy based on the proportion of known users on servers is proposed and evaluated on real-world cloud workload data alongside existing strategies. The evaluation takes attacks into account in which malicious VMs are either launched in regular intervals or their launch is timed around the launch of target VMs. The results indicate that the new known-users strategy is significantly more resistant to co-location attacks than existing strategies aimed at optimising resource utilisation, while retaining a relatively high resource utilisation exceeding that of strategies aimed at thwarting co-location attacks.