Serverless computing is becoming increasingly popular among attackers due to its emerging application paradigms. Unfortunately, conventional security tools are not easily transferable to serverless applications and existing serverless security solutions are inadequate. To address this issue, a team of researchers - Deepak Sirone Jegan, Liang Wang, Siddhant Bhagat, Thomas Ristenpart and Michael Swift - has developed an extensible security framework called SecLambda. This framework uses both local function state and global application state to perform complex security tasks for safeguarding an application. The team demonstrates how SecLambda can be used to achieve control flow integrity, credential protection and rate limiting in serverless applications. They evaluate the performance overhead and security of SecLambda using realistic open-source applications and conclude that it can mitigate several attacks while introducing relatively low performance overhead. This paper presents a comprehensive solution for guarding serverless applications against potential threats that could compromise their integrity or confidentiality.
- Serverless computing is popular among attackers due to its emerging application paradigms
- Conventional security tools are not easily transferable to serverless applications
- Existing serverless security solutions are inadequate
- A team of researchers has developed an extensible security framework called SecLambda
- SecLambda uses both local function state and global application state to perform complex security tasks for safeguarding an application
- SecLambda can be used to achieve control flow integrity, credential protection, and rate limiting in serverless applications
- The team evaluated the performance overhead and security of SecLambda using realistic open-source applications
- SecLambda can mitigate several attacks while introducing relatively low performance overhead
- This paper presents a comprehensive solution for guarding serverless applications against potential threats that could compromise their integrity or confidentiality.
There is a new way of making computer programs called serverless computing, but bad people like to use it to do bad things. Regular security tools don't work well with these new programs, and the current security solutions are not good enough. A group of smart people made a new tool called SecLambda that can help keep these programs safe by doing important security tasks. This tool can protect against attacks and make sure only the right people can use the program. They tested it on some real programs and it works pretty well.
Definitions
- Serverless computing: a way of making computer programs without needing to manage servers or infrastructure
- Security tools: software used to protect computer systems from unauthorized access or damage
- Serverless applications: computer programs made using serverless computing
- Extensible framework: a tool that can be easily modified or expanded upon
- Control flow integrity: ensuring that the program runs in the intended order without any unexpected changes
- Credential protection: keeping usernames and passwords safe from being stolen
- Rate limiting: controlling how often someone can use a program or service
SecLambda: A Comprehensive Security Framework for Serverless Computing
Serverless computing is becoming increasingly popular among developers due to its emerging application paradigms. Unfortunately, conventional security tools are not easily transferable to serverless applications and existing serverless security solutions are inadequate. To address this issue, a team of researchers - Deepak Sirone Jegan, Liang Wang, Siddhant Bhagat, Thomas Ristenpart and Michael Swift - has developed an extensible security framework called SecLambda. This framework uses both local function state and global application state to perform complex security tasks for safeguarding an application.
Overview of SecLambda
SecLambda is designed as an extensible framework that can be used to achieve control flow integrity (CFI), credential protection and rate limiting in serverless applications. It works by combining the local function state with the global application state to identify potential threats that could compromise the integrity or confidentiality of a serverless application. The team evaluated the performance overhead and security of SecLambda using realistic open-source applications and concluded that it can mitigate several attacks while introducing relatively low performance overhead.
Control Flow Integrity
The CFI feature of SecLambda helps protect against malicious code injections by ensuring that only authorized functions are executed in a given context. This is achieved by tracking all possible execution paths within a given function and verifying them against predefined policies before allowing any code execution. If any unauthorized code is detected, it will be blocked from executing further instructions until it has been verified by the system administrator or other designated personnel.
Credential Protection
SecLambda also provides credential protection which prevents attackers from gaining access to sensitive information such as passwords or API keys stored within an application’s environment variables or configuration files. This feature works by encrypting these credentials when they are stored on disk so that even if they are compromised they cannot be read without proper authorization from the system administrator or other designated personnel.
Rate Limiting
Finally, SecLambda offers rate limiting capabilities which help prevent denial-of-service attacks by limiting how often certain requests can be made within a given time period. This ensures that even if an attacker attempts to overwhelm your system with requests it will still remain operational since only a limited number of requests will actually be processed at any given time period thus preventing service disruptions caused due to excessive load on your servers or services hosted on them .
Conclusion
In conclusion, this paper presents a comprehensive solution for guarding serverless applications against potential threats that could compromise their integrity or confidentiality through its use of control flow integrity (CFI), credential protection and rate limiting features provided by its extensible security framework called SecLambda . The team evaluated the performance overhead and security offered by this framework using realistic open-source applications concluding that it can effectively mitigate several types of attacks while introducing relatively low performance overhead making it suitable for protecting critical data stored in cloud environments .
