EDoS eye: A game theoretic approach to mitigate economic denial of sustainability attack in cloud computing

Abstract

Economic denial of sustainability (EDoS) is an emerging threat of cloud computing. This new form of attack is a breed of DDoS attack that exploits the volatility of cloud consumers utility cost model. EDoS attackers fraudulently consume resources that result multiple cloud instances due to auto scaling feature of cloud. Consequently, affected cloud consumer ends up with an excessive amount of payment which may lead towards insolvency. In addition, benign cloud users experience gradual service degradation. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to combat EDoS attack using game theory. We model an interactive game between the attacker and defender by creating static game scenario. Our proposed analytical model named EDoS Eye able to find an optimal strategic threshold value through Nash equilibrium. This threshold value can block EDoS traffic efficiently. Moreover, honeypot incorporation in our model reduce the false rate. Simulation results further ensure the efficacy of our model.