Abstract:

Serverless architecture reduces cloud computing development and operational costs through its event-driven and fully managed model. However, the inherent security threats arising from program fragmentation, multi-source inputs, and complex dependency chains pose significant challenges to traditional defense mechanisms. While mimic defense can effectively block vulnerability exploitation chains, its heterogeneity strategies exhibit limitations in serverless environments due to incompatibility with serverless function ap- plication mechanisms, resulting in deployment difficulties. To address the security challenges in serverless environments, this paper proposed a serverless-oriented mimic defense scheme—mimic function. By analyzing heterogeneity conditions under the mimic defense framework, we designed a tailored heterogeneity strategy for serverless architectures and con- structed a prototype system to intercept unknown vulnerability exploits targeting serverless platforms. Furthermore, to mitigate the amplification of Denial-of-Wallet (DoW) attacks in mimic defense scenarios, we proposed a heterogeneous executor scheduling algorithm that alleviated the impact of high-concurrency traffic on load imbalance among executors, achieving a balance between system heterogeneity and performance. Experimental results demonstrate that the mimic function prototype system effectively defends against unknown serverless-targeted attacks while maintaining controlled dispersion of heterogeneous executors.

Key words: serverless, mimetic defense, cloud native