Mitigating Virtual Machine Denial of Service Attacks from Mobile APPS

With the advances in cloud computing and the use of virtualisation, the complexity of computing systems had never been greater. Due to this greater complexity securing these systems have also become more complex and difficult, especially given the ease with which hackers can bring to bear Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Luckily, advances in technology have also provided the means of administering these complex computing systems through the use of mobile devices, such as with an Android OS based smartphone. In this paper we provide an option for managing the eradication of rogue processes created through DoS attacks by way of a mobile device application or app. Through the use of this mobile app built on the Android platform a system administrator would be alerted to a potential security incident and be given the tools to kill a rogue process without having to be onsite or initiate a terminal session through secure shell or another terminal program. This type of option could be very appealing to small or mid-sized enterprises which cannot afford the cost of having personnel staffed onsite 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The mobile app was built with security in mind and would provide a system administrator a quicker and more direct ability to curtail DoS attacks before they caused greater harm.