Cloud Attack Surface Area, Vulnerabilities, Threats, and Attack Vectors

Cloud computing offers a multitude of benefits for organizations, but it also introduces a unique set of security challenges. Unlike traditional on-premises environments, cloud infrastructure presents an expanded attack surface area for malicious actors to exploit. This section delves into the key concepts related to cloud security risks: attack surface, vulnerabilities, threats, and attack vectors.

Cloud Attack Surface and Vulnerabilities

The same cyber threats exist in the cloud as on-premises infrastructure and services but with additional new points of attack.

Hypervisor

The hypervisor is a common target, as attacks on the hypervisor can affect the host machine, the OS running on the host machine (in the case of a software-based Type 2 hypervisor), the hypervisor itself, and its VM tenants. In the case of a Type 1 hypervisor (a bootable hypervisor that runs directly on the machine), there is a smaller...