Self-healing multitier architectures using cascading rescue points

Angeliki Zavou, Georgios Portokalidis, Angelos D. Keromytis

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Software bugs and vulnerabilities cause serious problems to both home users and the Internet infrastructure, limiting the availability of Internet services, causing loss of data, and reducing system integrity. Software self-healing using rescue points (RPs) is a known mechanism for recovering from unforeseen errors. However, applying it on multitier architectures can be problematic because certain actions, like transmitting data over the network, cannot be undone. We propose cascading rescue points (CRPs) to address the state inconsistency issues that can arise when using traditional RPs to recover from errors in interconnected applications. With CRPs, when an application executing within a RP transmits data, the remote peer is notified to also perform a checkpoint, so the communicating entities checkpoint in a coordinated, but loosely coupled way. Notifications are also sent when RPs successfully complete execution, and when recovery is initiated, so that the appropriate action is performed by remote parties. We developed a tool that implements CRPs by dynamically instrumenting binaries and transparently injecting notifications in the already established TCP channels between applications. We tested our tool with various applications, including the MySQL and Apache servers, and show that it allows them to successfully recover from errors, while incurring moderate overhead between 4.54% and 71.56%.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 28th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, ACSAC 2012
Pages379-388
Number of pages10
DOIs
StatePublished - 2012
Event28th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, ACSAC 2012 - Orlando, FL, United States
Duration: 3 Dec 20127 Dec 2012

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Conference

Conference28th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, ACSAC 2012
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityOrlando, FL
Period3/12/127/12/12

Keywords

  • Error recovery
  • Multitier applications
  • Reliable software
  • Software self-healing

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