Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP)Cloud Concepts, Architecture and DesignHard
An organization is migrating its on-premises virtualized environment to an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud provider. The security team is concerned about the potential for 'hypervisor escape' attacks, where an attacker gains unauthorized access from a guest virtual machine to the underlying hypervisor or other guest virtual machines. Which fundamental cloud security challenge does this concern directly relate to?
- AShared Technology Vulnerabilities
- BInsufficient Due Diligence
- CData Portability
- DAPI Security
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Shared Technology Vulnerabilities
Hypervisor escape is a direct example of a 'shared technology vulnerability' in IaaS, where a flaw in the shared hypervisor or virtualization technology can be exploited to compromise the isolation between tenants, affecting multiple customers.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Insufficient due diligence is a process failure, not a specific technical challenge like hypervisor escape.
- C. Data portability relates to moving data between clouds, not hypervisor exploits.
- D. API security focuses on securing programmatic interfaces, not the virtualization layer itself.
Shared Technology Vulnerabilities
Security challenges arising from shared underlying cloud infrastructure components (e.g., hypervisors, network devices), where a vulnerability can affect multiple tenants.
- Includes hypervisor escape, shared memory attacks
- Requires strong patching and configuration management by CSP
- A key concern in multi-tenant environments
Memory trick: Shared tech, shared risk.