Biblio

The tremendous growth of cloud computing and large-scale data analytics highlight the importance of reducing datacenter power consumption and environmental impact of brown energy. While many Internet service operators have at least partially powered their datacenters by green energy, it is challenging to effectively utilize green energy due to the intermittency of renewable sources, such as solar or wind. We find that the geographical diversity of internet-scale services can be carefully scheduled to improve the efficiency of applying green energy in datacenters. In this paper, we propose a holistic heterogeneity-aware cloud workload management approach, sCloud, that aims to maximize the system goodput in distributed self-sustainable datacenters. sCloud adaptively places the transactional workload to distributed datacenters, allocates the available resource to heterogeneous workloads in each datacenter, and migrates batch jobs across datacenters, while taking into account the green power availability and QoS requirements. We formulate the transactional workload placement as a constrained optimization problem that can be solved by nonlinear programming. Then, we propose a batch job migration algorithm to further improve the system goodput when the green power supply varies widely at different locations. Finally, we extend sCloud by integrating a flexible batch job manager to dynamically control the job execution progress without violating the deadlines. We have implemented sCloud in a university cloud testbed with real-world weather conditions and workload traces. Experimental results demonstrate sCloud can achieve near-to-optimal system performance while being resilient to dynamic power availability. sCloud with the flexible batch job management approach outperforms a heterogeneity-oblivious approach by 37 percent in improving system goodput and 33 percent in reducing QoS violations.

The massive integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) into power systems is a major challenge but it also provides new opportunities for network operation. For example, with a large amount of RES available at HV subtransmission level, it is possible to exploit them as controlling resources in islanding conditions. Thus, a procedure for off-line evaluation of islanded operation feasibility in the presence of RES is proposed. The method finds which generators and loads remain connected after islanding to balance the island's real power maximizing the amount of supplied load and assuring the network's long-term security. For each possible islanding event, the set of optimal control actions (load/generation shedding) to apply in case of actual islanding, is found. The procedure is formulated as a Mixed Integer Non-Linear Problem (MINLP) and is solved using Genetic Algorithms (GAs). Results, including dynamic simulations, are shown for a representative HV subtransmission grid.

In this paper, we study system security against Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). APTs are stealthy and persistent but APTs interact with system and introduce information flows in the system as data-flow and control-flow commands. Dynamic Information Flow Tracking (DIFT) is a promising detection mechanism against APTs which taints suspicious input sources in the system and performs online security analysis when a tainted information is used in unauthorized manner. Our objective in this paper is to model DIFT that handle data-flow and conditional branches in the program that arise from control-flow commands. We use game theoretic framework and provide the first analytical model of DIFT with data-flow and conditional-branch tracking. Our game model which is an undiscounted infinite-horizon stochastic game captures the interaction between APTs and DIFT and the notion of conditional branching. We prove that the best response of the APT is a maximal reachability probability problem and provide a polynomial-time algorithm to find the best response by solving a linear optimization problem. We formulate the best response of the defense as a linear optimization problem and show that an optimal solution to the linear program returns a deterministic optimal policy for the defense. Since finding Nash equilibrium for infinite-horizon undiscounted stochastic games is computationally difficult, we present a nonlinear programming based polynomial-time algorithm to find an E-Nash equilibrium. Finally, we perform experimental analysis of our algorithm on real-world data for NetRecon attack augmented with conditional branching.

Currently, video surveillance systems play an important role in ensuring the safety of citizens, their property, etc., which greatly contributes to the reduction of crime. Due to the high intrinsic value and/or high efficiency of their use for the prevention and detection of crimes, they themselves often become the objects of illegal actions (theft, damage). The main purpose of video surveillance systems is to provide continuous visual monitoring of the situation at a particular facility or territory, as well as event registration. The breakdown of the camera is detected by the loss of signal in the control center. However, the absence of a signal for reasons other than these can also be caused by an accident on the power line, a communication channel break, software or hardware breakdown of the camera itself. In this regard, there is a problem of determining the exact cause of the lack of signal and, consequently, the need for a rapid response to it. The paper proposes an approach of video surveillance arrangement according to their main functional purpose, as well as their ability to monitor each other. Based on this approach, a mathematical model of the choice of locations and conditions of location of video surveillance equipment from a set of potentially acceptable as a problem of nonlinear Boolean programming is developed. This model maximizes the functionality of the video surveillance system, taking into account the importance of areas and objects of surveillance with restrictions on the number of video surveillance of each type, the nature of the terrain and existing buildings. An algorithm for solving this problem is proposed.

Software-defined networking (SDN) allows the smart grid to be centrally controlled and managed by decoupling the control plane from the data plane, but it also expands attack surface for attackers. Existing studies about the security of SDN-enabled smart grid (SDSG) mainly focused on static methods such as access control and identity authentication, which is vulnerable to attackers that carefully probe the system. As the attacks become more variable and complex, there is an urgent need for dynamic defense methods. In this paper, we propose a security function virtualization (SFV) based moving target defense of SDSG which makes the attack surface constantly changing. First, we design a dynamic defense mechanism by migrating virtual security function (VSF) instances as the traffic state changes. The centralized SDN controller is re-designed for global status monitoring and migration management. Moreover, we formalize the VSF instances migration problem as an integer nonlinear programming problem with multiple constraints and design a pre-migration algorithm to prevent VSF instances' resources from being exhausted. Simulation results indicate the feasibility of the proposed scheme.

Fog computing extends cloud computing technology to the edge of the infrastructure to support dynamic computation for IoT applications. Reduced latency and location awareness in objects' data access is attained by displacing workloads from the central cloud to edge devices. Doing so, it reduces raw data transfers from target objects to the central cloud, thus overcoming communication bottlenecks. This is a key step towards the pervasive uptake of next generation IoT-based services. In this work we study efficient orchestration of applications in fog computing, where a fog application is the cascade of a cloud module and a fog module. The problem results into a mixed integer non linear optimisation. It involves multiple constraints due to computation and communication demands of fog applications, available infrastructure resources and it accounts also the location of target IoT objects. We show that it is possible to reduce the complexity of the original problem with a related placement formulation, which is further solved using a greedy algorithm. This algorithm is the core placement logic of FogAtlas, a fog computing platform based on existing virtualization technologies. Extensive numerical results validate the model and the scalability of the proposed algorithm, showing performance close to the optimal solution with respect to the number of served applications.

This paper formulates a power system related optimal control problem, motivated by potential cyber-attacks on grid control systems, and ensuing defensive response to such attacks. The problem is formulated as a standard nonlinear program in the GAMS optimization environment, with system dynamics discretized over a short time horizon providing constraint equations, which are then treated via waveform relaxation. Selection of objective function and additional decision variables is explored first for identifying grid vulnerability to cyber-attacks that act by modifying feedback control system parameters. The resulting decisions for the attacker are then fixed, and the optimization problem is modified with a new objective function and decision variables, to explore a defender's possible response to such attacks.