Detecting behaviors of malicious users in cloud computing environments

• Grant number: 15/26720-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2016
• End date: October 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computer Systems
• Principal Investigator: Júlio Cézar Estrella
• Grantee: Emanuel Carlos de Alcantara Valente
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Cloud computing is no longer a new paradigm to become the leading solution for companies, institutions and end users to migrate their systems and storing your data. Coupled with the high demand, large providers of these services and startups have been offering their solutions at affordable prices. To attract new users, these companies have been facilitating the process of creating new accounts, requiring, in most cases, only a valid email address. This fact, aggregated with high availability and high processing power at low costs, have attracted the attention of cybercriminals. Malicious users have been using services based on cloud computing, especially storage services for multiple illegal activities, such as distributing malware, managing botnets, and hosting services, such as selling arms and illicit drugs. The dissemination of malware that currently is not only related to specialized and isolated groups, but also is linked to a monetization market, known as PPI (Pay-per-Install) service, walks into a dependency of storage services in the cloud. This project aims to identify the presence of malicious users from storage services in the cloud by detecting malware associated to the respective users of these services using the Hadoop tool. (AU)