Title: Commercial Off The Shelf Platform Moving Target: Moving target defense strategy using vMotion
Abstract: There has been a steady stream of moving target defense research done around the world. The use of hypervisors for platform moving target defense is common research practice. The hypervisors are used to randomizing the movement and protect VMs with custom code using open source software as a framework. However, this approach has left a gap in the research of utilization of moving target defense for physical hosts and implementing commercial products to drive moving target defense techniques. A new moving target defense technique, COTS MTS is introduced as a theoretical proposal in this paper to fulfill this gap.
The aim of the proposed commercial off the shelf system is to create movement in the physical host using commercial live migration software, while not disturbing the services provided by the VMs. There are five specifications to meet before a commercial off the shelf live migration is considered. In the end, VMware vMotion was selected. There are now there phases to progressively reach true randomization of movement for physical hosts. Each phase is to be evaluated based on live migration performance and its ability to feature, disrupt or even stop exploits reaching the physical host.