YACL Talk | Nov 14 | Jhonatan Tavori, Columbia University - Exploiting Miscoordination of Microservices in Cloud Applications by DDoS Attacks

[Aviv Yaish]

Do join our next talk!

• Jhonatan Tavori, Columbia University - Exploiting Miscoordination of Microservices in Cloud Applications by DDoS Attacks 

• Abstract: The delay and throttling (service-blocking) experienced by users are critical measures of quality-of-service in cloud-based services. To maintain their functionality, service providers allocate substantial budgets to cloud infrastructure for their services. In this talk, we examine loosely-coupled components within a request's journey through a cloud-based service. Numerous cloud systems are now constructed using loosely connected services. Each of these services is tasked with a specific function and is characterized by distinct scaling attributes. We observe that when microservices which utilize separate auto-scaling mechanisms operate in tandem to process traffic, they may perform ineffectively, especially under overload conditions, due to DDoS attacks. This can result in throttling and over-provisioning of resources (Economic Denial of Sustainability – EDoS). We further demonstrate how an attacker can exploit the tandem behavior to initiate effective DDoS attacks, causing service providers to incur charges for requests that fail to be serviced. Joint work with Anat Bremler-Barr, Michael Czeizler and Hanoch Levy (IEEE INFOCOM 2024).

• Links: https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOM52122.2024.10621335

• Bio: Jhonatan Tavori is a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow and a Zuckerman STEM Leadership Scholar at Columbia University. He received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University in 2025, advised by Prof. Hanoch Levy. His research interests revolve around stochastic network analysis and security, DDoS attacks on microservices-based applications, and edge-cloud systems resilience. Recently, he was recognized with the Blavatnik Prize for Outstanding Doctoral Fellows in Computer Science and the EU Horizon’s Next Generation Internet Fellowship.

• Livestream: https://yale.zoom.us/j/97543200429?pwd=M0zaSWWpi8mDRpch8eAuRqyVeYSM2X.1

• More details: https://yacl.cs.yale.edu

[Aviv Yaish]

Reminding everyone of today's interesting talk. See you at 11:00!