Classifying high performance computing system breaches

210042133/2022/19

The remarkable growth of cyber connectivity and remotely delivered services has resulted in cybersecurity taking priority among other challenges. High Performance Computing (HPC) systems are subjected to the same styles of attacks, as they have an active internet connection and run the same as any other computer. However, traditional security solutions do not perform well with HPC systems as they can affect performance. The trade-off between performance and computer security has been an important computer development consideration throughout the years.

As HPC processor speeds are increasing, numerous threats have emerged and seem to be developing even more quickly because of it. Most of these vulnerabilities are related to how contemporary CPUs use cache and speculative execution. Several cyber countermeasures on detecting attacks have been implemented such as operating system modification and data execution prevention. The future of security is at the hardware level, the past security approaches of “just enough security” on systems have shown various security gaps because the hardware was optimised for speed and never for security.

The study aims to adopt the survey research for data collection and to analyse and interpret it adopting descriptive statistics, specifically utilising convenience sampling as determined by the researcher. It is looking into the risks involved in hardware security, such as the type of attacks that target the hardware of a system designed to operate in a HPC environment and their impact if these hardware systems are not secured. It is focusing on classifying hardware security breaches and proposing a framework development categorising where to focus efforts to protect against HPC system attacks.