Co-Resident Attack and its impact on Virtual Environment

Abstract Cloud computing (CC) is one of the emerging computing models that potentially transform the IT industry. The cloud computing is defined as a computing paradigm that enables suitable, universal, on-demand network access of various computing resources like data storage, OS (Operating System), computer applications and software as well. A Cloud model essentially is characterized with features like on-demand self-service, better network access, resource distribution, elasticity and measured services. Cloud computing is also known as Internet Computing and is indeed reshaping the way industries and organisations function. It facilitates the service taker or the client to use various IT resources like OS (Operating System), middleware and various applications without the need of downloading it. In this paper a brief view of this computing paradigm and the underlying cloud infrastructure is presented. We essentially present an analysis of various security challenges that are inherent in the Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS) cloud model and explain terms like virtualization, VM (virtual machine), SLA (Service level agreement), etc. Here, CloudSim simulator is explored to study the impact of variation of cache size of the Virtual Machine on the availability of data centres, that occurs due to co-resident attack. Further, a brief view of the co-resident attack is further presented and some of the feasible countermeasures are discussed further.