Next Generation Security: Assessing Vulnerability of Grid Computing Networks

General Project Description

We are investigating vulnerability of grid computing networks. It is widespread consensus that grid computing networks will play a major role in the next generation network. Grid computing depends on high-speed bandwidth communication as well as CPU cycles to complete tasks. In fact, the emerging optical networks employing wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) have theoretical bandwidths of over 100 terabits per second. In addition, doubling the time of network performance at eight months outruns central processing unit (CPU) performance as defined by “Moore’s law”, which is a prediction of a factor of two in chip density improvement every 18 months. This environment is fostering grid computing.

Because grid networks are composed of loosely coupled, heterogeneous resources managed by different administrators, they are far more vulnerable than single administrator networks. Therefore, grid infrastructures supporting e-Government, e-Life, e-Business, e-Science and ubiquitous systems will be easy targets for cyber-terrorists. Cyber-terrorism pursues political, religious, or ideological goals using a computer-based attack or threat intended to frighten or coerce governments or societies. A sufficiently destructive or disruptive attack could lead to deaths, bodily injuries, extended power outages, plane crashes, water contamination, or major economic losses.

As we have seen in recent history, terrorism is a serious global reality. We must be vigilant against this threat as we embrace the inevitable trend toward grid computing to support applications requiring a massive amount of computation power and/or a tremendous amount of data, such as pet-bytes (10¹⁵ bytes) scale systems.