Security & Vulnerability Analysis
Hardening the "Soft Center": Specialized Cybersecurity for High-Performance Environments.
Protecting the Supercomputer
Standard IT security tools (like aggressive port scanners) can actually knock over an HPC cluster by saturating low-latency networks or freezing the scheduler. Our specialized "White Hat" approach respects the delicate performance requirements of the hardware while identifying the cracks in the system before they can be exploited.
1. Specialized Assessment Methodology
Passive Discovery
Scanning Login and Management nodes for CVEs. HPC Rule: We never scan the high-speed fabric (InfiniBand) with standard tools to avoid "Broadcast Storms."
Configuration Audit
Forensic review of Slurm, Lustre, and GPFS config files. We check for unauthorized "Prolog/Epilog" scripts and dangerous setuid binaries.
Red Team Testing
Simulated "Student Account" attacks. Can a standard user escalate privileges, read another user's research data, or crash a compute node?
2. HPC-Specific Attack Surfaces
Scheduler Privilege Escalation
Schedulers like Slurm run as root. We analyze if users can trick the scheduler into running malicious scripts with root privileges across the entire cluster.
Container Breakout
Users bringing Docker/Singularity containers represent a risk. If containers run as --privileged, we audit the potential for "escaping" to attack the host kernel.
3. "Zero Trust" Mitigation Strategy
Since packet encryption is often too slow for HPC performance, we rely on strict network and filesystem segmentation:
- Root Squashing: Ensuring that even if a user is root on a local node, the filesystem treats them as 'nobody'.
- Prolog Sanitization: Strict admin-control over scripts running before or after a user job.
- Outbound Blocking: Compute nodes are isolated from the internet to prevent malware from "phoning home".
Security Assessment Toolset
| Category | Tool | Usage |
|---|---|---|
| Vulnerability Scanner | Nessus / OpenVAS | Scanning Login and Management nodes for outdated kernels and CVEs. |
| System Auditing | Lynis | Automated security auditing for Linux, checking permissions and password policies. |
| HPC Specific | Check_Slurm | Specialized scripts to detect known misconfigurations in workload managers. |
| Forensics | Auditd | The Linux Audit Daemon for tracking command execution history and root escalations. |
Secure Your Performance
Download our "HPC Security Hardening Checklist" to learn how to secure your Slurm and Lustre environments without losing speed.
Download Security Guide (.docx)