Research
SARTS: Security-Aware Real-Time Systems
|
This research is
supported in part by the
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology under Grant 103295 and by Intel
Corporation under Grant 2005-04-070. |
Presentation SlidesSecurity-Aware Scheduling for Real-Time Parallel Applications on Clusters [ PPT | PDF | Abstract ]
Improving quality of security is
increasingly becoming an important issue in the design of real-time systems,
which are indispensable for conducting business in government, industry, and
academic organizations. This project addresses the issue of
maximizing quality of security for real-time systems. We aim at developing
and validating new mechanisms and schemes for security-aware
real-time systems, including dynamic/static scheduling algorithms, security
overhead modeling, security level controllers, and security-aware storage
resources. These new schemes are expected to deliver high quality of security
while meeting timing constraints of real-time systems. The novelty of the
research comes not only from the security-aware schemes, but also from an
improved methodology for designing and evaluating mechanisms and algorithms
that integrate quality of security, scheduling,
and resource management into real-time systems. Once the
proposed schemes are adopted, our security-aware real-time scheduling
algorithms and resource management mechanisms will be included within
existing cyber security tools and services. Our solutions to the
security-aware problem in the context of real-time systems include the
following: 1. Security-Aware
Resource Management 1.1 A Security Middleware
Model 1.2 Dynamic Real-Time Scheduling with Security Awareness 2. Security-Aware
Scheduling on Clusters 2.1 SAREC: Security-Aware Real-Time
Scheduling for Clusters 2.2 An Allocation Scheme for Parallel
Applications with Security Constraints 2.3 Security-Aware Real-Time
Scheduling for Heterogeneous Clusters 3. Security-Aware
Task Allocation in Grids 3.1 Enhancing Security of Real-Time Applications on Grids 3.2 Security-Driven Scheduling for Data Grids 4. Security-Aware
Scheduling for Embedded Real-Time Systems 4.1 Improving Security for Periodic Tasks in Embedded Systems 5. Adaptive Quality of Security Control in Storage Systems 5.1 An Adaptive Write Scheme for Secure Local Disk Systems 5.2 Quality of Security Control in Parallel and Distributed Disk
Systems 6. Fault Tolerance, Security, and Energy Issues in Real-Time
Systems 6.1 Security-Aware Fault-Tolerant Real-Time Systems
1.1 A Security
Middleware Model. [Back to Top]
Recently, real-time applications with security requirements increasingly
emerged in large-scale distributed systems such as Grids. However, the
complexities and specialties of diverse security mechanisms dissuade users
from employing existing security services for their applications. To
effectively tackle this problem, in this paper we propose a security
middleware (SMW) model from which security-sensitive real-time applications
are enabled to exploit a variety of security services to enhance the
trustworthy executions of the applications. A quality of security control
manager (QSCM), a centerpiece of the SMW model, has been designed and
implemented to achieve a flexible trade-off between overheads caused by
security services and system performance, especially under situations where
available resources are dynamically changing and insufficient. A
security-aware scheduling mechanism, which plays an important role in QSCM,
is capable of maximizing quality of security for real-time applications running
in distributed systems as large-scale as Grids. Our empirical studies based
on real world traces from a supercomputing center demonstratively show that
the proposed model can significantly improve the performance of Grids in
terms of both security and schedulability. 1.1.2 A Security Middleware Model for Real-time Applications on
Grids. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie
and X. Qin, IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, Feb.
2006. 1.1.1
Towards a Security Service Integration Framework for Distributed Real-Time
Systems. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie
and X. Qin, Proc. 18th International Conference on Parallel and
Distributed Computing Systems, Sept. 2005. 1.2 Dynamic Real-Time Scheduling
with Security Awareness. [Back to
Top] An increasing number of
real-time applications, such as aircraft control and medical electronics
systems, require high quality of security to assure confidentiality,
authenticity and integrity of information. However, most existing algorithms
for scheduling independent tasks in real-time systems do not adequately
consider security requirements of real-time tasks. In recognition of this
problem we proposed a novel dynamic scheduling algorithm with security
awareness, which is capable of achieving high quality of security for
real-time tasks while improving resource utilization. We have conducted
extensive simulation experiments to quantitatively evaluate the performance
of our approach. Specifically, experimental results show that compared with
three heuristic algorithms, the proposed algorithm can consistently improve
overall system performance in terms of quality of security and system
guarantee ratio under a wide range of workload characteristics. 1.2.3 Dynamic Task Scheduling with Security Awareness in Real-Time
Systems. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie,
X. Qin, A. H. Sung, M. Lin, and L. Yang, Int'l Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, vol. 4, no. 3/4, 2006. 1.2.2
Open Issues and Challenges in Security-aware Real-Time Scheduling for
Distributed Systems. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie, X. Qin, and M. Lin, Journal of
Information, vol. 9, no. 2, March 2006. 1.2.1
Dynamic Task Scheduling with Security Awareness in Real-Time Systems. [ Abstract | PDF
] T. Xie,
A. H. Sung, and X. Qin, Proc. 19th International
Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), 4th Int'l Workshop on Performance
Modeling, Evaluation, and Optimization of Parallel and Distributed Systems,
IEEE/ACM, April 2005.
2.1 SAREC: Security-Aware Real-Time Scheduling for Clusters. [Back to Top] Over the last ten years, clusters have become
the fastest growing platforms in high-performance computing. Security requirements of security-critical
real-time applications on clusters must be met in addition to satisfying
timing constraints. However, conventional real-time scheduling algorithms
ignore the applications’ security requirements. We investigated the problem
of scheduling a set of independent real-time tasks running on clusters. In
particular, we proposed a security overhead model that is capable of
measuring security overheads incurred by security-critical tasks. Further, we
proposed a security-aware scheduling strategy, or SAREC, which integrates
security requirements into scheduling for real-time applications by employing
our security overhead model. To evaluate the effectiveness of SAREC, we
implement a security-aware real-time scheduling algorithm (SAREC-EDF), which
incorporates the earliest deadline first (EDF) scheduling algorithm into
SAREC. Extensive simulation experiments show that SAREC-EDF significantly
improves overall system performance over three baseline scheduling algorithms
(variations of EDF) by up to 72.55%. 2.1.3
Scheduling Security-Critical Real-Time Applications on Clusters. T. Xie
and X. Qin, IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 55, No. 7,
pp.864-879, July 2006. 2.1.2
Sharp: A New Real-Time Scheduling Algorithm to Improve Security of Parallel
Applications on Heterogeneous Clusters. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie,
X. Qin, and M. Nijim, Proc. 25th IEEE Int'l Performance Computing and
Communications Conference (IPCCC), April 2006. 2.1.1
SAREC: A Security-Aware Scheduling Strategy for Real-Time Applications
on Clusters. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie,
X. Qin, and A. H. Sung, Proc. 34th International Conference on Parallel
Processing (ICPP), pp.5-12, June 2005. 2.2 An Allocation
Scheme for Parallel Applications with Security Constraints on Clusters. [Back to Top] In this study, we address
the issue of allocating tasks of parallel applications on clusters subject to
timing and security constraints in addition to precedence relationships. A
task allocation scheme, or TAPADS (Task Allocation for Parallel Applications
with Deadline and Security Constraints), is developed to find an optimal
allocation that maximizes quality of security and the probability of meeting
deadlines for parallel applications. In addition, we proposed mathematical
models to describe a system framework, parallel applications with deadline
and security constraints, and security overheads. Experimental results show
that TAPADS significantly improves the performance of clusters in terms of
quality of security and schedulability over three existing allocation
schemes. 2.2.1 A New Allocation Scheme for Parallel Applications with
Deadline and Security Constraints on Clusters. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie and X. Qin, Proc. IEEE 7th
International Conference on Cluster Computing (Cluster'05), Boston, Sept. 2005. 2.3
Security-Aware Real-Time Scheduling for Heterogeneous
Clusters. [Back to Top] This work
characterizes the problem of improving quality of security for real-time
parallel applications on heterogeneous clusters. We propose a new security-
and heterogeneity-driven scheduling algorithm (SHARP for short), which
strives to maximize the probability that parallel applications are executed
in time without any risk of being attacked. Because of high security overhead
in existing clusters, an important step in scheduling is to guarantee jobs' security
requirements while minimizing overall execution times. The SHARP algorithm
accounts for security constraints in addition to different processing
capabilities of each node in a cluster. We introduce two novel performance
metrics, degree of security deficiency and risk-free probability, to
quantitatively measure quality of security provided by a heterogeneous
cluster. Both security and performance of SHARP are compared with two
well-known scheduling algorithms. Extensive experimental studies using real-world
traces confirm that the proposed SHARP algorithm significantly improves
security and performance of parallel applications on heterogeneous clusters. 2.3.2
SHARP: A New Real-Time Scheduling Algorithm to Improve Security of Parallel
Applications on Heterogeneous Clusters. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie,
X. Qin, and M. Nijim, Proc. 25th IEEE Int'l Performance Computing and
Communications Conference (IPCCC), April 2006. 2.3.1
Incorporating Security into Real-Time Scheduling for Parallel Jobs on
Clusters. T. Xie
and X. Qin, 26th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS),
Work-in-Progress Session, Dec. 2005.
3.1 Enhancing Security of Real-Time Applications on
Grids. [Back to Top]
Security sensitive
real-time applications can take full advantage of a grid environment that
allows grid participants to exercise a fine-grained control and allocation of
computational resources. However, conventional real-time scheduling
algorithms failed to fulfill the security requirements of real-time
applications. In this research we proposed a
dynamic real-time scheduling algorithm, or SAREG, which is able to enhance
quality of security for real-time applications running on Grids. To
make SAREG practical, we present a mathematical model to formally describe a scheduling framework,
security-sensitive real-time applications, and security overheads. We
leverage the model to measure security overheads incurred by an array of
security services, including encryption, authentication,
integrity check, etc. To evaluate the effectiveness of SAREG, we conducted extensive
simulations using a real world trace from a supercomputing centre. Our
experimental results show
that SAREG significantly improves system
performance in terms of quality of security and schedulability over three
existing scheduling algorithms. 3.1.3. Performance
Evaluation of a New Scheduling Algorithm for Distributed Systems with
Security Heterogeneity. [Abstract | PDF]
T. Xie and X. Qin, Journal of Parallel and
Distributed Computing, vol. 67, no. 10, pp. 1067-1081, October 2007.
3.1.2 A Security-Oriented Task
Scheduler for Heterogeneous Distributed Systems. [ Abstract | PDF
] T. Xie
and X. Qin, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS 4297), pp.
35-46, ISBN: 978-3-540-68039-0, Springer-Verlag, Dec. 2006. Editors: Y.
Roberts, M. Parashar, R. Badrinath, and V.K. Prasanna. (Proc. 13th Annual IEEE Int'l Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC), Dec. 2006.) 3.1.1
Enhancing Security of Real-Time Applications on Grids through Dynamic
Scheduling. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie
and X. Qin, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS 3834), ISSN:
0302-9743, ISBN: 3-540-31024-X, Springer, August 2005, pp. 219-237, Editors:
D. Feitelson, E. Frachtenberg, L. Rudolph and U. Schwiegelshohn. (Proc.
the 11th Workshop on Job Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing (JSSPP),
pp.146-158, Cambridge, MA, June 2005) 3.2 Security-Driven Scheduling for Data Grids. [Back to Top] Security-sensitive
applications that access and generate large data sets are emerging in various
areas including bioinformatics and high energy physics. Data grids provide
such data-intensive applications with a large virtual storage framework with
unlimited power. However, conventional scheduling algorithms for data grids
are unable to meet the security needs of data-intensive applications. In this
paper we address the problem of scheduling
data-intensive jobs on data grids subject to security constraints. Using
a security- and data-aware technique, SAHA, a
Security-Aware and Heterogeneity-Aware scheduling strategy, is proposed to improve
quality of security for data-intensive applications running on data grids. To
incorporate security into job scheduling, we introduce a new performance
metric, degree of security deficiency, to quantitatively
measure quality of security provided by a data grid. Results based on a real-world trace confirm that the
proposed scheduling strategy significantly improves security and performance
over four existing scheduling algorithms. 3.2.2.
SAHA: A Scheduling Algorithm for Security-Sensitive Jobs on Data Grids. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie
and X. Qin, Proc. IEEE/ACM 6th Int'l Symp. Cluster Computing and the
Grid (CCGrid), 2nd Int'l Workshop on Cluster Security, May 2006. 3.2.1
Security-Driven Scheduling for Data-Intensive Applications on Grids. [Abstract | PDF] T. Xie
and X. Qin, Cluster Computing: The Journal of Networks, Software Tools and
Applications, Special Issue: Evaluation and Optimization of
High-Performance Computing and Networking Systems, Guest Editors: G.-Y Min
and M. Ould-Khaoua, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 145-153, June 2007. 4.1
Improving Security for Periodic Tasks in Embedded Systems. [Back to Top] While many scheduling algorithms for periodic
tasks ignore security requirements posed by sensitive applications and are
consequently unable to perform properly in embedded systems with security
constraints. In this paper we present an approach to scheduling periodic
tasks in embedded systems subject to security and timing constraints. We
design a necessary and sufficient feasibility check for a set of periodic
tasks with security requirements. With the feasibility test in place, we
propose a scheduling algorithm, or SASES (Security-Aware Scheduling for
Embedded Systems), which accounts for both security and timing requirements.
SASES judiciously distributes slack times among a variety of security
services for a set of periodic tasks, thereby optimizing security for
embedded systems without sacrificing schedulability. To demonstrate the
effectiveness of SASES, we apply the proposed SASES to real world embedded
systems such as an automated flight control system. We show through extensive
simulations that SASES is able to maximize security
for embedded systems while guaranteeing timeliness. In particular, SASES
significantly improves security over three baseline algorithms by up to
107%. 4.1.2
Improving Security for Periodic Tasks in Embedded Systems through Scheduling. T. Xie
and X. Qin, ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, submitted
May 2005. Accepted March 2006. 4.1.1 An
Approach to Satisfying Security Needs of Periodic Tasks in High Performance
Embedded Systems. T. Xie,
X. Qin, and A. H. Sung, 12th IEEE Int'l Conf. High Performance Computing (HiPC),
poster session, Dec. 2005. (Refereed) Adaptive Quality of Security Control in Storage Systems [Back to Top] Power, security, and
performance issues in modern storage systems are of critical importance. This
work is intended to develop new adaptive strategies that can
judiciously select appropriate power states and security services for disk
I/O requests while endeavoring to guarantee various performance requirements
(e.g., desired response times). In what follows, we describe our novel
approaches to securing storage systems through adaptive strategies.
5.1 An Adaptive Write Scheme for Secure Local Disk
Systems. [Back to Top] Since security is of
critical importance for modern storage systems, it is imperative to protect
stored data from being tampered or disclosed. Although an increasing number
of secure storage systems have been developed, there is no way to dynamically
choose security services to meet disk requests' flexible security
requirements. Furthermore, existing security techniques for disk systems are
not suitable to guarantee desired response times of disk requests. We remedy
this situation by proposing an adaptive strategy (referred to as AWARDS) that
can judiciously select the most appropriate security service for each write
request while endeavoring to guarantee the desired response times of all disk
requests. Experimental results show that AWARDS significantly improves
security and overall performance over an existing scheme by up to 325.0% and
358.9% (with averages of 199.5% and 213.4%). 5.1.2
Awards: An Adaptive Write Scheme for Secure Local Disk Systems. [ Abstract | PDF ] M.
Nijim, X. Qin, T. Xie, and M. Alghamdi, Proc. 25th IEEE Int'l Performance Computing and
Communications Conference (IPCCC), April 2006. 5.1.1
Modeling and Improving Security of a Local Disk System for Write-Intensive
Workloads. [Abstract | PDF] M.
Nijim, X. Qin, and T. Xie, ACM Transactions on Storage, vol. 2, no. 4,
pp. 400-423, Nov. 2006.
5.2 Quality of Security Control in Parallel and Distributed Disk
Systems. [Back to Top]
Parallel and distributed disk systems, which have been widely used in
building networked and data intensive applications, are highly scalable and
can alleviate the problem of disk I/O bottleneck. Although a number of
parallel and distributed disk systems have been developed, the systems lack a
means to optimize quality of security for dynamically changing networked
environments. We remedy this situation by proposing an adaptive quality of
security control scheme for parallel and distributed disk systems that makes
it possible for disk systems to adapt to changing security requirements and
workload conditions. Our approach is carried out in three phases: dynamic
data partitioning, response time estimation, and adaptive security quality
control. Hence, our scheme is conducive to adaptively and expeditiously
determining security schemes for disk requests in a way to improve security of parallel
and distributed disk systems while making an effort to guarantee desired
response times of the requests. 5.2.5 Security-Aware Cache Management for Cluster Storage Systems. M. Nijim, Z.-L. Zong, K. Bellam, X.-J. Ruan and X. Qin, Proc. the 17th Int'l Conf. Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN), St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, Aug. 2008. 5.2.4 StReD : A Quality of Security Framework for Storage
Resources in Data Grids. [Abstract
| PDF] M.
Nijim, Z.-L. Zong, and X. Qin, Future Generation Computer Systems: The Int'l Journal of Grid
Computing, vol. 23, no. 6, pp. 816-824, July 2007. 5.2.3
Adaptive Quality of Security Control in Networked Parallel Disk Systems. [ Abstract | PDF
] M.
Nijim, X. Qin, and T. Xie, Proc.
15th Int'l Conference on Computer
Communications and Networks (ICCCN), Arlington, Virginia, Oct.
2006. 5.2.2
Sharp: A New Real-Time Scheduling Algorithm to Improve Security of Parallel
Applications on Heterogeneous Clusters. [ Abstract | PDF ] T. Xie,
X. Qin, and M. Nijim, Proc. 25th IEEE Int'l Performance Computing and
Communications Conference (IPCCC), April 2006. 5.2.1.
An Adaptive Strategy for Secure Distributed Disk Systems. M. Nijim, T. Xie, Z.-L. Zong, and X. Qin, NASA/IEEE
Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies, WiP Session, May
2006. Fault Tolerance, Security, and Energy
Issues in Real-Time Systems [Back to Top] Fault tolerance, security, and energy issues in modern real-time
systems are of critical importance. This work is intended to seamlessly integrate security services and
energy conservation techniques for real-time systems while endeavoring to
achieving high system reliability. 6.1 Security-Aware Fault-Tolerant Real-Time Systems. [Back to Top] In the past five
years, mandatory security requirements and fault tolerance have become
critical criteria for most real-time systems. Although many conventional
fault-tolerant or security approaches were investigated and applied to
real-time systems, most existing schemes only addressed either security
demands ignoring the fault-tolerant requirements or vice versa. To bridge
this technology gap in real-time systems, in this study we propose a way of
integrating fault recovery, confidentiality, and integrity services. The
novel integration of security and fault recovery makes it possible to
implement next-generation real-time systems with high reliability and quality
of security. 6.1.2
Interplay of Security and Reliability using Non-Uniform Checkpoints. [Abstract | PDF] K. Bellam, R. K. Vudata, X. Qin, Z.-L. Zong, M.
Nijim, and X.-J. Ruan, Proc. 16th Int'l Conference on Computer
Communications and Networks (ICCCN), Honolulu, Hawaii, Aug. 2007.
6.1.1
Integrating Fault Recovery and Quality of Security in Real-Time Systems. [Abstract | PDF] K. Bellam, Z. Zong, M. Alghamdi, M. Nijim, and X. Qin, Proc. IEEE International
Symposium on Ubisafe Computing, Ontario, Canada, May 2007. |
Current
Work
Current
studies in this work include: Updated on 5/29/2008
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