Least Co-Residence: A Novel Virtual Migration Algorithm for Mitigating Side-Channel Attacks

The advent of cloud platforms has revolutionized the landscape of modern business and user computing by providing a scalable and cost-effective alternative to the traditional model of purchasing and maintaining equipment. However, the coresidence feature, which is inherent to virtual machines (VMs) in cloud platforms, creates vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit to launch cache-based side-channel attacks, thereby compromising the security of user information. To address this problem, this paper proposes a hot migration algorithm based on a multiarmed bandit (MAB) model, which leverages physical machine (PM) migration between PMs to mitigate side-channel attacks in the cloud. Our proposed algorithm achieves the optimal timeaverage reward and ensures the security of the cloud platform, thereby outperforming other algorithms. The findings of this study have significant implications for the development of secure cloud computing systems, with the potential to enhance user privacy and safeguard against cyber threats.