Patent Application
20220210167
Virtualization allows the abstraction and pooling of hardware resources to support virtual machines in a software-defined data center (SDDC). For example, through server virtualization, virtualized computing instances such as virtual machines (VMs) running different operating systems may be supported by the same physical machine (e.g., host). Each VM is generally provisioned with virtual resources to run a guest operating system and applications. The virtual resources may include central processing unit (CPU) resources, memory resources, storage resources, network resources, etc. In practice, it is desirable to detect potential security threats that may affect the performance of hosts and VMs in the SDDC.
According to examples of the present disclosure, context-aware intrusion detection may be implemented to improve data center security. For example, a computer system may be configured to generate context-aware intrusion detection alerts by mapping intrusion detection alerts to associated context information. This way, context-aware intrusion detection alerts may be generated to provide additional context information relating to potential security threats. Remediation action(s) may also be triggered based on at least the context information. Depending on the desired implementation, the context information may be associated with a virtualized computing instance, a client device associated with the virtualized computing instance, a user operating the client device, or any combination thereof.
In the following detailed description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, which form a part hereof. In the drawings, similar symbols typically identify similar components, unless context dictates otherwise. The illustrative embodiments described in the detailed description, drawings, and claims are not meant to be limiting. Other embodiments may be utilized, and other changes may be made, without departing from the spirit or scope of the subject matter presented here. It will be readily understood that the aspects of the present disclosure, as generally described herein, and illustrated in the drawings, can be arranged, substituted, combined, and designed in a wide variety of different configurations, all of which are explicitly contemplated herein.
SDN environment 100 includes multiple hosts 110A-B that are inter-connected via physical network 105. Each host 110A/110B may include suitable hardware 112A/112B and virtualization software (e.g., hypervisor-A 114A, hypervisor-B 114B) to support various virtual machines (VMs). For example, hosts 110A-B may support respective VMs 131-134. Hardware 112A/112B includes suitable physical components, such as central processing unit(s) or processor(s) 120A/120B; memory 122A/122B; physical network interface controllers (NICs) 124A/124B; and storage disk(s) 126A/126B. Note that SDN environment 100 may include any number of hosts (also known as a “host computers”, “host devices”, “physical servers”, “server systems”, “transport nodes,” etc.), where each host may be supporting tens or hundreds of VMs.
Hypervisor 114A/114B maintains a mapping between underlying hardware 112A/112B and virtual resources allocated to respective VMs. Virtual resources are allocated to respective VMs 131-134 to support a guest operating system and application(s); see 141-144, 151-154. Any suitable applications 141-144 may be implemented, such as user-space and/or kernel-space processes/applications labelled “APP1 ” to “APP4.” For example, virtual resources may include virtual CPU, guest physical memory, virtual disk, virtual network interface controller (VNIC), etc. Hardware resources may be emulated using virtual machine monitors (VMMs). For example, VNICs 161-164 are virtual network adapters for respective VMs 131-134. Each VNIC may be emulated by a corresponding VMM (not shown) instantiated by hypervisor 114A/114B. The VMMs may be considered as part of respective VMs, or alternatively, separated from the VMs. Although one-to-one relationships are shown, one VM may be associated with multiple VNICs (each VNIC having its own network address).
Although examples of the present disclosure refer to VMs, it should be understood that a “virtual machine” running on a host is merely one example of a “virtualized computing instance” or “workload.” A virtualized computing instance may represent an addressable data compute node (DCN) or isolated user space instance. In practice, any suitable technology may be used to provide isolated user space instances, not just hardware virtualization. Other virtualized computing instances may include containers (e.g., running within a VM or on top of a host operating system without the need for a hypervisor or separate operating system or implemented as an operating system level virtualization), virtual private servers, client computers, etc. Such container technology is available from, among others, Docker, Inc. The VMs may also be complete computational environments, containing virtual equivalents of the hardware and software components of a physical computing system.
The term “hypervisor” may refer generally to a software layer or component that supports the execution of multiple virtualized computing instances, including system-level software in guest VMs that supports namespace containers such as Docker, etc. Hypervisors 114A-B may each implement any suitable virtualization technology, such as VMware ESX® or ESXi™ (available from VMware, Inc.), Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), etc. The term “packet” may refer generally to a group of bits that can be transported together, and may be in another form, such as “frame,” “message,” “segment,” etc. The term “traffic” or “flow” may refer generally to multiple packets. The term “layer-2” may refer generally to a link layer or media access control (MAC) layer; “layer-3” to a network or Internet Protocol (IP) layer; and “layer-4” to a transport layer (e.g., using Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), etc.), in the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model, although the concepts described herein may be used with other networking models.
Hypervisor 114A/114B implements virtual switch 115A/115B and logical distributed router (DR) instance 117A/117B to handle egress packets from, and ingress packets to, corresponding VMs. In SDN environment 100, logical switches and logical DRs may be implemented in a distributed manner and can span multiple hosts. For example, logical switches that provide logical layer-2 connectivity, i.e., an overlay network, may be implemented collectively by virtual switches 115A-B and represented internally using forwarding tables 116A-B at respective virtual switches 115A-B. Forwarding tables 116A-B may each include entries that collectively implement the respective logical switches. Further, logical DRs that provide logical layer-3 connectivity may be implemented collectively by DR instances 117A-B and represented internally using routing tables (not shown) at respective DR instances 117A-B. The routing tables may each include entries that collectively implement the respective logical DRs.
Packets may be received from, or sent to, each VM via an associated logical port. For example, logical switch ports 171-174 are associated with respective VMs 131-134. Here, the term “logical port” or “logical switch port” may refer generally to a port on a logical switch to which a virtualized computing instance is connected. A “logical switch” may refer generally to a software-defined networking (SDN) construct that is collectively implemented by virtual switches 115A-B in
Through virtualization of networking services in SDN environment 100, logical networks (also referred to as overlay networks or logical overlay networks) may be provisioned, changed, stored, deleted and restored programmatically without having to reconfigure the underlying physical hardware architecture. A logical network may be formed using any suitable tunneling protocol, such as Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN), Stateless Transport Tunneling (STT), Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (GENEVE), etc. For example, VXLAN is a layer-2 overlay scheme on a layer-3 network that uses tunnel encapsulation to extend layer-2 segments across multiple hosts which may reside on different layer 2 physical networks. In the example in
SDN controller 180 and SDN manager 184 are example network management entities in SDN environment 100. One example of an SDN controller is the NSX controller component of VMware NSX® (available from VMware, Inc.) that operates on a central control plane. SDN controller 180 may be a member of a controller cluster (not shown for simplicity) that is configurable using SDN manager 184 operating on a management plane. Network management entity 180/184 may be implemented using physical machine(s), VM(s), or both. Logical switches, logical routers, and logical overlay networks may be configured using SDN controller 180, SDN manager 184, etc. To send or receive control information, a local control plane (LCP) agent (not shown) on host 110A/110B may interact with central control plane (CCP) module 182 at SDN controller 180 via control-plane channel 101/102.
Hosts 110A-B may also maintain data-plane connectivity with each other via physical network 105 to facilitate communication among VMs 131-134. Hypervisor 114A/114B may implement a virtual tunnel endpoint (VTEP) (not shown) to encapsulate and decapsulate packets with an outer header (also known as a tunnel header) identifying the relevant logical overlay network (e.g., VNI). For example in
One of the challenges in SDN environment 100 is improving the overall data center security. To protect VMs 131-134 against security threats caused by unwanted packets, hypervisor 114A/114B may implement intrusion detection system (IDS) engine and/or distributed firewall (DFW) engine 118A/118B to filter packets to and from associated VMs 131-134. In one example, IDS and DFW engines that have separate functionalities may work with each other on host 110A/110B. For example, at host-A 110A, hypervisor 114A implements IDS engine 118A to filter packets for VM1 131 and VM2 132. SDN controller 180 may be used to configure IDS signatures or firewall rules. In practice, packets may be filtered at any point along the datapath from a source (e.g., VM1 131) to a physical NIC (e.g., 124A). In one embodiment, a filter component (not shown) may be incorporated into each VNIC 141-144 to perform intrusion detection configured for respective VMs 131-134.
Context-Aware Intrusion Detection
According to examples of the present disclosure, context-aware intrusion detection may be performed to improve defense against potential security threats in SDN environment 100. As used herein, the term “context-aware” may refer generally to an approach that is capable of associating context information with a possible intrusion or security threat. The “context information” may be associated with a virtualized computing instance (e.g., VM, process, application), a physical device (e.g., client device), a user, etc. This way, context-aware intrusion alerts may be generated to trigger remediation action(s) based on at least on the context information. Examples of the present disclosure may be implemented to improve data center security and reduce system downtime due to malicious attacks.
In more detail,
In the example in
At 210 in
At 220 in
At 230 in
At 240 in
As will be described using
Depending on the desired implementation, block 350 may include mapping the intrusion detection alert to any one of the following: (a) a process or application (e.g., APP1 141) that is running on VM1 131 and responsible for the intrusion detection alert; (b) hardware information, software information or location information associated with client device 204 responsible for the alert; and (c) user information associated with user 205 responsible for the alert. This way, context-aware remediation action(s) may be triggered based on (a) the process or application; (b) hardware information, software information or location information associated with client device 204; or (c) user information associated with user 205.
Using examples of the present disclosure, alerts generated by IDS engine 118A may be enhanced using context information obtained from guest introspection agent 201 running inside VM1 131. This provides an improvement over conventional approaches that provide relatively limited information associated with a security threat.
Such conventional approaches may be lack efficiency because further (manual) investigations and troubleshooting by a network administrator may be required. In contrast, examples of the present disclosure may be implemented to provide substantially rich context information associated with a security threat. Based on the context information, context-aware remediation action(s) may be triggered to protect against similar attacks in the future. Various examples will be discussed below.
(a) Flow-context information
At 410-420 in
Depending on the desired implementation, guest introspection agent 201 may register hooks (e.g., callbacks) with kernel-space or user-space module(s) implemented by guest OS 151 for new network connection events, process events, etc. For example, in response to detecting a new secure shell (SSH) session initiated by VM1 131, guest introspection agent 201 receives a callback from the guest OS and sends context information to context engine 118A. In practice, guest introspection agent 201 may be a guest OS driver configured to interact with packet processing operations taking place at multiple layers in a networking stack of guest OS 151 and intercept file and/or network-related events. Guest introspection agent 201 may also check if an IDS alert is a false positive.
Any suitable “context information” may be obtained, such as application information (appInfo) associated with APP1 141, device information (devInfo) associated with client device 204, user information (userInfo) associated with user 205, or any combination thereof. Any suitable approach may be used by guest introspection agent 201 to obtain context information, examples of which are described in related U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/836,888 entitled “Context based firewall services for data message flows for multiple concurrent users on one machine,” the content of which is incorporated herein in its entirety.
Example application information (appInfo) may include application identifier (ID), application name, process hash, application path with command line parameters, resource consumption information (e.g., CPU consumption, network consumption, memory consumption, etc.) associated with application, application version, security level associated with application, etc. Example user information (userInfo) may include login name and role (e.g., sami@xyz.com and role=admin in
At 430 in
Referring now 520 in
At 521 in
(b) Intrusion detection alert (X)
At 440-450 in
In the example in
(c) Context-aware intrusion detection alert (Z)
At 470 in
At 480 in
At 490 in
Further, at 620, the context information (contextInfo) mapped to the alert (X) may include process or application information (see “app_id” and “process_id”), hardware information (see “devType”), software information (see “devOS”), location information (see “devLocation”), user information (see “login_name” and “user_role”), etc. This way, the context information from guest introspection agent 201 may be used to enhance the alert (X) to identify the process/application (e.g., APP1 141), client device 204 and user 205 responsible for the alert (X).
(d) Context-aware remediation action
At 490 in
Container Implementation
Although explained using VMs, it should be understood that public cloud environment 100 may include other virtual workloads, such as containers, etc. As used herein, the term “container” (also known as “container instance”) is used generally to describe an application that is encapsulated with all its dependencies (e.g., binaries, libraries, etc.). In the examples in
Computer System
The above examples can be implemented by hardware (including hardware logic circuitry), software or firmware or a combination thereof. The above examples may be implemented by any suitable computing device, computer system, etc. The computer system may include processor(s), memory unit(s) and physical NIC(s) that may communicate with each other via a communication bus, etc. The computer system may include a non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions or program code that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform process(es) described herein with reference to
The techniques introduced above can be implemented in special-purpose hardwired circuitry, in software and/or firmware in conjunction with programmable circuitry, or in a combination thereof. Special-purpose hardwired circuitry may be in the form of, for example, one or more application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), programmable logic devices (PLDs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and others. The term ‘processor’ is to be interpreted broadly to include a processing unit, ASIC, logic unit, or programmable gate array etc.
The foregoing detailed description has set forth various embodiments of the devices and/or processes via the use of block diagrams, flowcharts, and/or examples. Insofar as such block diagrams, flowcharts, and/or examples contain one or more functions and/or operations, it will be understood by those within the art that each function and/or operation within such block diagrams, flowcharts, or examples can be implemented, individually and/or collectively, by a wide range of hardware, software, firmware, or any combination thereof.
Those skilled in the art will recognize that some aspects of the embodiments disclosed herein, in whole or in part, can be equivalently implemented in integrated circuits, as one or more computer programs running on one or more computers (e.g., as one or more programs running on one or more computing systems), as one or more programs running on one or more processors (e.g., as one or more programs running on one or more microprocessors), as firmware, or as virtually any combination thereof, and that designing the circuitry and/or writing the code for the software and or firmware would be well within the skill of one of skill in the art in light of this disclosure.
Software and/or to implement the techniques introduced here may be stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and may be executed by one or more general-purpose or special-purpose programmable microprocessors. A “computer-readable storage medium”, as the term is used herein, includes any mechanism that provides (i.e., stores and/or transmits) information in a form accessible by a machine (e.g., a computer, network device, personal digital assistant (PDA), mobile device, manufacturing tool, any device with a set of one or more processors, etc.). A computer-readable storage medium may include recordable/non recordable media (e.g., read-only memory (ROM), random access memory (RAM), magnetic disk or optical storage media, flash memory devices, etc.).
The drawings are only illustrations of an example, wherein the units or procedure shown in the drawings are not necessarily essential for implementing the present disclosure. Those skilled in the art will understand that the units in the device in the examples can be arranged in the device in the examples as described or can be alternatively located in one or more devices different from that in the examples. The units in the examples described can be combined into one module or further divided into a plurality of sub-unit.
