Creating new nodes in your cloud environment was never as easy. Just a few clicks away system engineers create new virtual machines, assign network environments for them and deploy software components. Viable security engineering has ever been a key task to ensure your data’s confidentiality, integrity, and availibity. While hardening your operating systems and wisely designing you applications, cloud computing introduced a new challenge for engineers who are responsible for security. A breach in the perimeters of one of your central components threatens the overall security of all systems in any environment. The talk discusses predominant attack patterns that system engineers and security officers should consider. The top 10 threats come together with practical suggestions to improve data center security in the cloud. Bio: Nils Magnus works as a senior system engineer at inovex GmbH, Germany and designs cloud infrastructure for data centers. In previous roles he wrote as a journalist for Linux Magazine and was senior consultant for high security environments. Nils also serves at the Board of Directory of LinuxTag Association. He speaks for 15+ years at conferences around the world on the advantages of free and open source software, as well as on cloud and security management issues.

1. Wir nutzen Technologien, um unsere Kunden glücklich zu machen. Und uns selbst.
Security Considerations
Securely Setting up your Open Nebula Cloud
A top 10 Best Practise Guide
OpenNebula Conf, September 25, 2013 in Berlin, Germany
Nils Magnus
inovex GmbH
Senior System Engineer

2. 25.09.13
Agenda and Preamble
Protecting your Open Nebula Cloud
I.
Security is 90% architecture and 10% implementation.
Apparently trivial suggestions form the base of your protection.
II.
Security is intrinsically understaffed. Management wants
„quick wins“, team is looking to „get the job done“. Somehow.
III.
Security is not about checklists. If you are (or feel)
responsible, you need to know your individual
vulnerabilities. In this mode think like an attacker.
Share my thoughts how to protect
an Open Nebula cloud!

3. 25.09.13
Security needs Ressources
Don't underestimate the necessity of security.
Assign proper ressources to
adress this issue. Security is a
costly investment in the future.
It is a bargain compared to the loss of your
main business processes. The possible damage
scales to the same extend as your cloud itself.

4. 25.09.13
Admin Account
Protect access to the
• ONE admin account,
• the SunStone UI, and
infrastructure.
Once attackers gain unlawful access to your command bridge,
your systems might be doomed. All of them.

5. 25.09.13
VLAN Hopping
Prevent VLAN hopping in the scope of your SDN
and between physical hosts.
Network virtualization with
VLAN tagging comes very
handy, but keep in mind that
the very frames of all virtual
segments may travel of a
shared medium.

6. 25.09.13
Environments
Partition your cloud
network segments into
distinct security areas.
Protect the different security
environments and border them
from each other.
Actively separate
maturity environments
and different types of
processed data.

7. 25.09.13
Apply Classic Best Practises Anyway
Despite in the cloud, nonetheless apply
network security best practises like
• firewalls,
• intrusion detection, or
• data leak prevention,
based on the very requirements of your
environment.

8. 25.09.13
Host Protection
Securing
virtual machines
is not enough.
Make sure you also protect
the access to all of your hosts,
even if they are not designed
to have users on them.

9. 25.09.13
Key and User Management
Set up a working SSH
infrastructure and enforce it.
Open Nebula heavily relies on a working and
secured way to communicate with your hosts and
virtual machines.
Properly configured keys help both automating the
system deployment process and restricting acess on
a need-to-know basis.

10. 25.09.13
Sensible Distrust
Auto discovery and self
registration to the inventory are
powerful features that alleviate
the system engineer's duties.
But make sure that only known
bare metal systems register into
your cloud store and virtual
ressources.
Don't boot systems you don't
have full control over.

11. 25.09.13
Shared Storage
Protect access to your
shared storage.
Several hosts have to
access the images of
all security
environments.
Rogue images injected in
the right place might act as
trojan horses in otherwise
well-protected
environments.

12. 25.09.13
Availability
Keep ressources in mind. One major
advantage of virtualization is to share
ressources like CPU or IO bandwidth.
But some player in your cloud may or
may not play fair.
Those situations, both intended and
unintended, threaten your availability.
Enacting QoS measure could be helpful.

13. 25.09.13
Wrap-up
1. assign proper ressources
2. protect your admin
account
3. secure the networks
4. partition into
environments
5. apply classic network
security measures
6. protect your hosts
7. install a key infrastructure
8. authenticate all repositories
9. protect the shared storage
10. keep an eye on
availability
What did I say
about lists, anyway?

14. 25.09.13
Freedom is the brother of security. The great photos of this presentation are licensed
under the free Creative Commons license (CC-BY SA) that allows use and
redistribution (share alike) as long as you give proper attribution. A big thank you goes
to:
UCL Engineering for the chainmail:
http://flickr.com/photos/uclengineering/6946862623
Jwalanta Shrestha for the multi lanes in Kathmandu:
http://flickr.com/photos/jwalanta/4496289019/
Drgriz52 and the bears at the tent:
http://flickr.com/photos/drbair_photography/3571049565/
Steve Tannock and his meadows of the Peak District:
http://flickr.com/photos/stv/2586761094/
Chris McBrien for his photo of the blue keys:
http://flickr.com/photos/cmcbrien/4715320000/
Sergio Morchon for the array of cannons:
http://flickr.com/photos/smorchon/2951615532/
Simon Hooks for his shot of the Trojan Horse:
http://flickr.com/photos/gogap/253649673/
Sam Greenhalgh took a photo of a rack in a data center:
http://flickr.com/photos/80476901
Matt Peoples for the kegs:
http://flickr.com/photos/leftymgp/7332282888/
Justin Ennis photographed the Swiss Guard in Rome:
http://flickr.com/photos/averain/5307438963/
Schub@ took a photo a looking glass:
http://flickr.com/photos/schubi74/5793584347
Maury Landsman for the applause:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mau3ry/3763640652
Sources and Acknowledgment

15. 25.09.13
Thanks for listening! Questions?
Contact
Nils Magnus
Senior System Engineer
inovex GmbH
Office Munich
Valentin-Linhof-Str. 2
81829 Munich, Germany
+49-173-3181-057
nils.magnus@inovex.de
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