Cloud providers attempt to maintain the highest levels of isolation between Virtual Machines (VMs) and inter-user processes to keep co-located VMs and processes separate. This logical isolation creates an internal virtual network to separate VMs co-residing within a shared physical network. However, as co-residing VMs share their underlying VMM (Virtual Machine Monitor), virtual network, and hardware are susceptible to cross VM attacks. It is possible for a malicious VM to potentially access or control other VMs through network connections, shared memory, other shared resources, or by gaining the privilege level of its non-root machine. This research presents a two novel zero-day cross-VM network channel attacks. In the first attack, a malicious VM can redirect the network traffic of target VMs to a specific destination by impersonating the Virtual Network Interface Controller (VNIC). The malicious VM can extract the decrypted information from target VMs by using open source decryption tools such as Aircrack. The second contribution of this research is a privilege escalation attack in a cross VM cloud environment with Xen hypervisor. An adversary having limited privileges rights may execute Return-Oriented Programming (ROP), establish a connection with the root domain by exploiting the network channel, and acquiring the tool stack (root domain) which it is not authorized to access directly. Countermeasures against this attacks are also presented

Vision Transformers (ViTs) have proved to be a more powerful substitute for Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in various computer vision tasks, using the self-attention approach to gain remarkable results and observations. However, the adversarial robustness of ViTs against adversarial attack methods raises critical questions, and the issues of using these models in security-related applications remain under discussion. This paper presents a novel and systematic approach to evaluate and compare the adversarial robustness of ViTs with CNNs, explicitly concentrating on the image classification problem. We have performed extensive experiments using state-of-the-art adversarial example attacks, such as the Fast Gradient Sign Method (FGSM), Projected Gradient Descent (PGD), and DeepFool Attack (DFA). The findings of this research study represent that CNNs are more robust against more straightforward attacks such as FGSM. Still, ViTs show excellent resistance against more dangerous attacks like PGD and DFA attack methods. This work provides useful outcomes revealing the advantages and limitations of CNNs and ViTs, which are helpful for further study and applications regarding safer and more effective use of deep learning models of CNNs and ViTs.

Our research investigates the predictive performance and robustness of machine learning classification models and technical indicators for algorithmic trading in the volatile cryptocurrency market. The main aim is to identify reliable approaches for informed decision-making and profitable strategy development. With the increasing global adoption of cryptocurrency, robust trading models are essential for navigating its unique challenges and seizing investment opportunities. This study contributes to the field by offering a novel comparison of models, including logistic regression, random forest, and gradient boosting, under different data configurations and resampling techniques to address class imbalance. Historical data from cryptocurrency exchanges and data aggregators is collected, preprocessed, and used to train and evaluate these models. The impact of class imbalance, resampling techniques, and hyperparameter tuning on model performance is investigated. By analyzing historical cryptocurrency data, the methodology emphasizes hyperparameter tuning and backtesting, ensuring realistic model assessment. Results highlight the importance of addressing class imbalance and identify consistently outperforming models such as random forest, XGBoost, and gradient boosting. Our findings demonstrate that these models outperform others, indicating promising avenues for future research, particularly in sentiment analysis, reinforcement learning, and deep learning. This study provides valuable guidance for navigating the complex landscape of algorithmic trading in cryptocurrencies. By leveraging the findings and recommendations presented, practitioners can develop more robust and profitable trading strategies tailored to the unique characteristics of this emerging market.