International Journal of Distributed and Cloud Computing

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Security Vulnerabilities of Registers in LINUX Hosts:Buffer Overflow and Service Disruption Concerns


Affiliations
1 Department of Information Systems, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States
2 Department of Information Assurance, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States
     

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Security has become extremely important in the information technology field. Often times the most important resource a company has is the data that it has diligently gathered, the loss or deletion of which could cause the failure of the organization. With the advent of Cloud Computing and the use of shared or Colo (colocation) hardware this has become of even greater concern to organizations. This paper looks at ways in which the LINUX operating system and various software tools can be utilized to shed light on potential vulnerabilities, especially how memory is stored at the base layers of the operating system. The main focus is on the registers, and how certain LINUX based tools such as a debugger can be used to determine where memory resides and how it could potentially be attacked, changed, or deleted. Also, the paper discusses how these various techniques and utilities could be used to provide IT professionals with a better understanding of how these attacks could occur as well as the level of sophistication needed to deal with and prevent them.


Keywords

Cloud Computing, LINUX, Registers, Security, Virtualization.
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  • Security Vulnerabilities of Registers in LINUX Hosts:Buffer Overflow and Service Disruption Concerns

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Authors

Dennis Guster
Department of Information Systems, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States
Erich Rice
Department of Information Systems, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States
Hazem Farra
Department of Information Assurance, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States

Abstract


Security has become extremely important in the information technology field. Often times the most important resource a company has is the data that it has diligently gathered, the loss or deletion of which could cause the failure of the organization. With the advent of Cloud Computing and the use of shared or Colo (colocation) hardware this has become of even greater concern to organizations. This paper looks at ways in which the LINUX operating system and various software tools can be utilized to shed light on potential vulnerabilities, especially how memory is stored at the base layers of the operating system. The main focus is on the registers, and how certain LINUX based tools such as a debugger can be used to determine where memory resides and how it could potentially be attacked, changed, or deleted. Also, the paper discusses how these various techniques and utilities could be used to provide IT professionals with a better understanding of how these attacks could occur as well as the level of sophistication needed to deal with and prevent them.


Keywords


Cloud Computing, LINUX, Registers, Security, Virtualization.

References