15-421/08-731/46-869, Fall 2013 – Lecture 15

Security and Privacy in the Age of Cloud Computing

Ashwini Rao
October 31, 2013
THE BIG PICTURE

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Cloud Computing Landscape

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 Cloud Computing Landscape

Applications

Storage

Computing

Development
platform

Gartner predicts revenue of USD 131billion in 2013

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Who uses cloud computing?

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 Adoption trends

CIO Agenda Report, Gartner, 2013 (2053 CIOs, 36 industries, 41 countries)

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 Adoption trends

CIO Agenda Report, Gartner, 2013 (2053 CIOs, 36 industries, 41 countries)

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 Why do customers use the cloud?

KPMG International’s 2012 Global Cloud Provider Survey (n=179)

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CLOUD ANATOMY

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 What is a “cloud”?
• Attributes
• Multi-tenancy (shared-resources)
• Massive scalability
• Elasticity
• Pay per use
• Self-provisioning of resources

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 A simple definition
“In simple words, the Cloud refers to the process of
sharing resources (such as hardware, development
platforms and/or software) over the internet. It
enables On-Demand network access to a shared pool
of dynamically configurable computing resources.
These resources are accessed mostly on a pay-per-
use or subscription basis.”

The Cloud Changing the Business Ecosystem, KPMG, 2011

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 Service and deployment models
Service models Deployment models

Software-As-A-Service (SaaS) Public

Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) Private

Infrastructure-As-A-Service (IaaS) Hybrid

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 SPI (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS)
Model Cloud Service Provider (CSP) will provide E.g.

Application hosting, updates, Internet Google Docs,

SaaS
delivery/access to app, data partitioning Evernote

Browser-based software IDE (development,

test, production), integration with external web Force.com,
PaaS
services and databases, deploys customer Microsoft Azure
apps on provider platform

Amazon S3 and
Infrastructure (server/VM, storage, network
IaaS EC2,
etc.) that can run arbitrary software
Rackspace

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 Public, Private, Hybrid

Hybrid
Private/
internal
Public/
external

On premises/internal

Off premises/third-party
Image reproduced from Cloud security and privacy, 2009, Mather et al.

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CHALLENGES

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 Customers’ biggest concerns

KPMG International’s 2012 Global Cloud Provider Survey (n=179)

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 Customers’ biggest concerns

KPMG International’s 2012 Global Cloud Provider Survey (n=179)

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 Customers’ biggest concerns

KPMG International’s 2012 Global Cloud Provider Survey (n=179)

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 Customers’ biggest concerns

KPMG International’s 2012 Global Cloud Provider Survey (n=179)

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 Customers’ biggest concerns

KPMG International’s 2012 Global Cloud Provider Survey (n=179)

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 Challenges in using the cloud
• Security
• Privacy
• Compliance

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SECURITY

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 Cloud security
• What’s not new?
• Phishing, password, malware, downtime etc.
• What’s new? Understand…
• Change in trust boundaries
• Impact of using
• Public vs. private cloud
• IaaS vs. PaaS vs. SaaS
• Division of responsibilities between customer and
Cloud Service Provider (CSP)

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 Control, liability and accountability
On premise On premise IaaS PaaS SaaS
(hosted)

App App App App App

VM VM VM Services Services

Server Server Server Server Server

Storage Storage Storage Storage Storage

Network Network Network Network Network

Organization Organization shares Vendor

has control control with vendor has control
Image reproduced from Cloud security and privacy, 2009, Mather et al.

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 Security management
• Availability
• Access control
• Monitoring
• Vulnerability, patching, configuration
• Incident response

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 Amazon Web Services (AWS)

• Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2)

“Virtual Servers in the Cloud”

• Simple Storage Service (S3)

“Scalable Storage in the Cloud”

• DynamoDB
“Fast, Predictable, Highly-scalable
NoSQL data store”

• Other services …

https://aws.amazon.com/

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 Availability
• Why is this important?
• “Amazon Web Services suffers outage, takes
down Vine, Instagram, others,” Aug 26, 2013*
• E.g. AWS features
• Distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection
• Fault-tolerant, independent failure zones

*http://www.zdnet.com/amazon-web-services-suffers-outage-takes-down-vine-instagram-flipboard-with-it-7000019842/

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 Access control
• Who should have access?
• To VM, app, services etc.
• Users, admin, business admin, others?
• E.g. AWS features
• Built-in firewalls control access to instances
• Multi-factor authentication: password +
authentication code from MFA device
• Monitor AWS employee accesses

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 Monitoring
• Monitor
• Availability, unauthorized activities etc.
• E.g. AWS features
• DoS, MITM, port scan, packet sniffing
• Password brute-force detection
• Access logs (request type, resource, IP, time etc.)

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Vulnerability, patching, configuration
• E.g. AWS features
• Patching
• Automatic Software Patching for Amazon supplied
Windows image
• Configuration
• Password expiration for AWS employees
• Vulnerability
• Vulnerability scans on the host operating system, web
application and DB in the AWS environment

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 Customer responsibilities
• Cloud is a shared environment

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 Customer responsibilities
• Cloud is a shared environment

“AWS manages the underlying infrastructure but you

must secure anything you put on the infrastructure.”

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 Customer responsibilities
• AWS requires customers to
• Patch VM guest operating system
• Prevent port scans
• Change keys periodically
• Vulnerability testing of apps
• Others…

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 Data issue: confidentiality
• Transit between cloud and intranet
• E.g. use HTTPS
• Possible for simple storage
• E.g. data in Amazon S3 encrypted with AES-256
• Difficult for data processed by cloud
• Overhead of searching, indexing etc.
• E.g., iCloud does not encrypt data on mail server*
• If encrypted, data decrypted before processing
• Is it possible to perform computations on encrypted
data?^
*iCloud: iCloud security and privacy overview, Retrieved Oct 30, 2013, https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4865
^See Fully Homomorphic Encryption Scheme, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption

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 Encryption management
• Algorithms
• Proprietary vs. standards
• Key size
• Key management
• Ideally by customer
• Does CSP have decryption keys?
• E.g. Apple uses master key to decrypt iCloud data
to screen “objectionable” content*

*Apple holds the master decryption key when it comes to iCloud security, privacy, ArsTechnica, Apr 3, 2012

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 Data issue: comingled data
• Cloud uses multi-tenancy
• Data comingled with other users’ data
• Application vulnerabilities may allow
unauthorized access
• E.g. Google docs unauthorized sharing, Mar 2009
• “identified and fixed a bug which may have caused
you to share some of your documents without your
knowledge.”

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PRIVACY AND COMPLIANCE

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 Privacy challenges
• Protect PII
• Ensure conformance to FIPs principles
• Compliance with laws and regulations
• GLBA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, Patriot Act etc.
• Multi-jurisdictional requirements
• EU Directive, EU-US Safe Harbor

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 Key FIPs requirements
It is easier to combine data from multiple sources in the
Use limitation cloud. How do we ensure data is used for originally
specified purposes?
Is CSP retention period consistent with company needs?
Retention
Does CSP have proper backup and archival?

Does CSP delete data securely and from all storage

Deletion
sources?

Does CSP provide reasonable security for data, e.g.,

Security
encryption of PII, access control and integrity?
Company can transfer liability to CSP, but not
Accountability accountability. How does company identify privacy
breaches and notify its users?

Access Can company provide access to data on the cloud?

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 Laws and regulations
• Require compliance with different FIPs
• Laws in different countries provide
different privacy protections
• EU Directive more strict than US
• In US, data stored on public cloud has less
protection than personal servers
• May be subpoenaed without notice*

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MITIGATION

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 Service level agreements
• Increasing to deal with loss of control
• SLA permits CMU IRB data on Box.com; can’t use Dropbox

Do you [CSP] have SLAs in Do you expect to have SLAs in

your cloud offerings today? cloud offerings within 3 years?
KPMG International’s 2012 Global Cloud Provider Survey (n=179)

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 Top SLA parameters
System Regulatory
availability compliance

Data Response
security time

Other
Functional performance
capabilities levels

What do you [CSP] believe are the most important SLA

parameters today?*
*KPMG International’s 2012 Global Cloud Provider Survey (n=179 )

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 CSPs improving security

Tighter restrictions Greater use of data Improving real-time

on user access encryption threat detection

What steps are you [CSP] taking to improve data security and
privacy in your cloud offerings? (top 3)*
*KPMG International’s 2012 Global Cloud Provider Survey (n=179)

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 Private and hybrid clouds

• Rise in hybrid and

private cloud for
sensitive data
• Private cloud cost can
be prohibitive
• Hybrid cloud ranks 4 on
Gartner top 10 strategic
technology trends, 2014
Models companies use/intend to use*
(Larger companies prefer private)
KPMG's The Cloud: Changing the Business Ecosystem, 2011

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 Other approaches
• Move cloud to countries with better
privacy protections
• Many customers moving away from the US
• US industry may lose $22 to $35 billion in next
three years due to NSA surveillance*
• Depend on third-party certifications
• E.g. AWS has ISO 27001, PCI-DSS Level 1 etc.
• Learn about CSP security under NDA

*How Much Will PRISM Cost the U.S. Cloud Computing Industry? ITIF Report, Aug. 2013

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 Summary
• Cloud is a tradeoff between cost,
security and privacy
• Change in trust boundaries leads to
security and privacy challenges
• Mostly no new security or privacy
issues per se

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 References
• Cloud security and privacy, 2009, Mather et al.
• CIO Agenda Report, Gartner, 2013
• KPMG International’s Global Cloud Provider Survey, 2012
• KPMG's The Cloud: Changing the Business Ecosystem, 2011
• How Much Will PRISM Cost the U.S. Cloud Computing Industry? ITIF
Report, Aug. 2013
• Apple holds the master decryption key when it comes to iCloud
security, privacy, ArsTechnica, Apr 3, 2012
• AWS Whitepaper: Overview of Security Processes, Oct 30, 2013
http://media.amazonwebservices.com/pdf/AWS_Security_Whitepaper.p
df
• iCloud: iCloud security and privacy overview, Oct 30, 2013,
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT4865
• Homomorphic Encryption Scheme, Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption

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ADDITIONAL SLIDES

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 Shared infrastructure issues
• Reputation-fate sharing
• Blacklisting of shared IP addresses
• E.g. Spamhaus blacklisted AWS IP range sending spam1
• An FBI takedown of data center servers may affect
other companies co-hosted on the servers2
• Cross virtual-machine attacks
• Malicious VM can attack other VMs hosted on the
same physical server3
• E.g. stealing SSH keys

1
https://blog.commtouch.com/cafe/ip-reputation/spamhaus-unblocks-mail-from-amazon-ec2-%E2%80%93-sort-of/
2
http://www.informationweek.com/security/management/are-you-ready-for-an-fbi-server-takedown/231000897
3
Hey, you, get off of my cloud: exploring information leakage in third-party compute clouds, Ristenpart et al., ACM CCS 09
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 Lineage, provenance, remanence
• Identifying lineage for audit is difficult
• i.e. tracing data as it flows in the cloud
• Ensuring provenance is difficult
• i.e. computational accuracy of data
processed by CSP
• Residual data may be accessible by
other users
• CSP should securely erase data

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 Access and authentication
• Protocol interoperability between CSPs
• Support for access from multiple
devices and locations
• E.g. SSO, augmented authentication etc.
• Finer grained access control
• E.g. Support multiple roles such as user, admin,
and business admin via RBAC

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