Origin Server Cloaking via Virtual Private Cloud Network
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Solution Overview
Problem
Origin servers in virtual private cloud networks face security vulnerabilities due to public addressability, making them susceptible to unauthorized access and volumetric attacks, and the management of whitelists for content delivery networks (CDNs) is cumbersome and prone to errors.
Innovation Solution
Implementing an origin server within a virtual private cloud network that communicates privately with a managed VPC, using VPC identifiers to establish a private route and encapsulate packets, allowing secure communication without public addressability, and enabling the origin server to provide content to CDNs without exposing it to the public network.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If origin servers are made publically addressable to service CDN requests, then content delivery functionality is enabled, but security vulnerabilities increase due to unauthorized access and volumetric attacks
Solution Approach 1:
A communication manager is introduced as an intermediary component that receives requests from CDNs and forwards them to the origin server. The origin server remains private and unaddressable from the public network, while the communication manager handles all external communications, thus enabling content delivery without exposing the origin server to security threats.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If whitelists are implemented to control CDN access to origin servers, then security is improved, but management complexity and error-proneness increase
Solution Approach 1:
The communication manager serves as a permanent intermediary that inherently controls access to the origin server. Instead of maintaining dynamic whitelists of CDN IP addresses, the system uses the communication manager as a fixed access point that all CDNs must route through, eliminating whitelist management complexity while maintaining security.
3Ease of operation
If origin servers use public IP addresses for CDN communication, then network connectivity is enabled, but IPv4 address exhaustion problems arise and future IP version updates are blocked
Solution Approach 1:
The network architecture is segmented into two distinct network segments: a public network segment where CDNs operate with public IP addresses, and a private network segment where the origin server resides with private IP addresses. The communication manager bridges these segments, allowing connectivity without requiring public IP addresses for the origin server, thus conserving IPv4 address space and enabling future IP version transitions.
Data Source
AI summary
An origin server that is implemented within one or more devices within a third party virtual private cloud (VPC) is provided herein. Instead of communicating with various CDNs over a public network, the third party VPC may instead communicate with a managed VPC via a private network. Thus, no gateway, network address translation (NAT), or other such devices may be needed for the third party VPC and the managed VPC to communicate. Rather, a VPC identifier of the managed VPC and a VPC identifier of the third party VPC are used to pair the two VPCs. Once paired, a private route is set up such that points from the private address space of the third party VPC to the private address space of the managed VPC. The managed VPC then communicates directly with the various CDNs via a public network.