Abstract
In this paper, we discuss the co-location attack problem in the cloud IaaS from the Virtual Machine (VM) placement strategy perspective. We formulate the online secure optimization VM placement problem in a way that guarantees—apriori—a specified level of security while minimizing the number of used physical servers. To solve such a problem, we propose an approximate online secure VM placement algorithm based on sampling. The polynomial-time algorithm is based on a sound security inference procedure based on the confidence interval estimation method. Our empirical results demonstrate the correctness and the effectiveness of our approach in guaranteeing a Co-Location-Resistant (CLR) VM placement with a specific level of confidence and a threshold error as new incoming VM requests are being assigned to servers online. We compared our algorithm to a CLR alternative presented in Azar et al. (2014).
•A new formulation of the online “secure optimization” VM placement problem.•A new co-location resistant constraint to formalize the security notion.•A statistical approach based on sampling to design a secure VM placement strategy.•A VM placement method ensures a priori security threshold at a given confidence level.