Self-Healing VM Architecture with Unique ABIs
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current computing systems are ill-equipped to defend against automated cyberattacks, as they rely on human intervention, which is slow and inadequate, and existing host protection approaches provide limited benefits against advanced adversaries, leading to a need for automated response capabilities to ensure resilient computing services.
Innovation Solution
A distributed computing system initializes multiple virtual machines with unique Application Binary Interfaces (ABIs) and automatically fails over to a standby VM upon detecting a failover event, such as a cyberattack, to maintain service availability and resilience.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If human intervention is used to detect and respond to cyberattacks, then systems can respond to threats, but the response speed is slow and inadequate against automated attacks
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements automated self-service mechanisms where the computing system autonomously detects, confirms, and responds to cyberattacks without requiring human intervention. The self-healing architecture automatically identifies compromised virtual machines and executes failover procedures, enabling the system to defend itself in real-time against automated cyberattacks.
Solution Approach 2:
The system prepares standby virtual machines in advance with unique ABIs before attacks occur. These pre-configured backup VMs are ready to immediately take over service provision when a failover event is detected, eliminating the time required for manual intervention and enabling rapid automated response to cyber threats.
2Extent of automation
If multiple virtual machines with unique ABIs are initialized and automated failover is implemented, then automated response to cyberattacks is achieved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments the computing service into multiple independent virtual machines, each with its own unique ABI. This segmentation allows the system to isolate and failover from compromised VMs to clean VMs, achieving automated cyberattack response while managing complexity through modular, independent components that can be individually initialized and managed.
Data Source
AI summary
For each respective virtual machine (VM) of a plurality of VMs, a distributed computing system generates a unique Application Binary Interface (ABI) for an operating system for the respective VM, compiles a software application to use the unique ABI, and installs the operating system and the compiled software application on the respective VM. A dispatcher node dispatches, to one or more VMs of the plurality of VMs that provide a service and are in the active mode, request messages for the service. Furthermore, a first host device may determine, in response to software in the first VM invoking a system call in a manner inconsistent with the unique ABI for the operating system of the first VM, that a failover event has occurred. Responsive to the failover event, the distributed computing system fails over from the first VM to a second VM.