Virtual machine rotation for mitigation of a Slowloris attack

Abstract

Virtual machine rotation is a moving target security technique consisting on the creation of various similar virtual machines, capable of hosting a web server. These are put on a rotational queue and are rebooted after a period of time to give place for the next one to host the server. In this work, we apply this technique as a defense against a Slowloris attack. We find that virtual machine rotation is an effective strategy against Slowloris attacks, avoiding a complete interruption of service.