Abstract
The InfiniBand network architecture, which delivers very high bandwidth and low latency, is one of the leading interconnects used in high performance computing. As its popularity increases, applications of InfiniBand in the critical infrastructure are growing, which creates the potential of new security risks.
This chapter addresses some open security issues related to InfiniBand. It demonstrates that common traffic analyzing tools are unable to capture or monitor InfiniBand traffic transmitted between hosts. Due to the kernel bypass nature of InfiniBand, many host-based network security systems cannot be executed on InfiniBand applications and, unfortunately, those that can impose significant network performance penalties. The principal takeaways are that Ethernet security practices do not translate to InfiniBand networks and securing InfiniBand networks requires a hardware offload strategy.
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Mireles, L., Graham, S., Sweeney, P., Dunlap, S., Dallmeyer, M. (2020). Securing an InfiniBand Network and its Effect on Performance. In: Staggs, J., Shenoi, S. (eds) Critical Infrastructure Protection XIV. ICCIP 2020. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 596. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62840-6_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62840-6_8
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