A Survey of Cloud Authentication Attacks andSolution Approaches

Cloud computing is an evolving computing paradigm that offers great potential to improve productivity and operational efficiency. This recently developed technology supports resource sharing and multi-tenancy which in turn contributes towards reduced capital and operational expenditure. While cost and ease of use are the main benefits of cloud computing, trust and security are the two top concerns of users of cloud services. The providers of this fast growing technology need to address many issues related to virtualization distributed computing, application security, identity management, access control and authentication. However, strong user authentication that restricts illegal access to the service providing servers is the paramount requirement for securing cloud environment. In this regard, the paper focuses on identifying the various authentication attacks in cloud environment. An attempt has been made to understand the root cause of the authentication attacks and propose possible mitigation measures in a cloud environment.