Kernel-based power consumption and isolation and defense against emerging power attacks

Abstract

A system and method for achieving power isolation across different cloud tenants and workloads is provided. The system includes a model of per-workload power consumption and an approach for attributing power consumption for each container. It allows a cloud provider to detect abnormally high power usage caused by specific containers and/or tenants, and to neutralize the emerging power attacks that exploit information leakages in the public container cloud. The approach also enables the provider to bill tenants for their specific power usage. Thus, the technique herein provides a mechanism that operates to attribute power consumption data for each container to defend against emerging power attacks, as well as to make it feasible to develop a cloud billing model based on power usage. The mechanism defends against emerging power attacks in container cloud offerings by implementing in a power-based namespace workflow in an OS kernel. The namespace workflow partitions the power consumption information for each container.