Towards a vulnerability tree security evaluation of OpenStack's logical architecture

Abstract

Cloud computing's rapid development has favored the emergence of many other technologies like OpenStack, which is the most popular open-source cloud management software. OpenStack has received a lot of praise lately thanks to its ease of use and its vibrant community, but it has also started garnering attention in the national vulnerability database. Furthermore, OpenStack has a logical architecture in which, the degree of interconnectedness within and between the components is a source of many security concerns. To prevent the damages that can be caused by the combination of these security issues, we proposed a vulnerability tree security analysis of OpenStack's logical architecture that allowed us to generate ready-to-use vulnerability trees of the major services or components of the architecture. We also suggested an amendment of OpenStack's vulnerability naming, because the current naming does not cope well with our proposal. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.