Behaviour reflects personality: detecting co-residence attacks on Xen-based cloud environments

Cloud computing is gradually becoming the most popular option of Information Technology infrastructures. However, an important issue that has emerged through that revolution is the preservation of an adequate level of security for the infrastructure and the confrontation of malicious insiders. This paper proposes a methodology for detecting the co-residency attack in the kernel layer of a Xen-based cloud environment, using an implementation of the Smith–Waterman genetic algorithm. The proposed approach has been explored in a test bed environment, producing results that verify its effectiveness.