# Guarding Serverless Applications with SecLambda

**Authors:** Deepak Sirone Jegan, Liang Wang, Siddhant Bhagat, Thomas Ristenpart, Michael Swift  
**arXiv:** [2011.05322](https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.05322)  
**Date:** 2020-11-10  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/en/paper/2011.05322v1/

## Key points

- Serverless computing is popular among attackers due to its emerging application paradigms
- Conventional security tools are not easily transferable to serverless applications
- Existing serverless security solutions are inadequate
- A team of researchers has developed an extensible security framework called SecLambda
- SecLambda uses both local function state and global application state to perform complex security tasks for safeguarding an application
- SecLambda can be used to achieve control flow integrity, credential protection, and rate limiting in serverless applications
- The team evaluated the performance overhead and security of SecLambda using realistic open-source applications
- SecLambda can mitigate several attacks while introducing relatively low performance overhead
- This paper presents a comprehensive solution for guarding serverless applications against potential threats that could compromise their integrity or confidentiality.

## Summary

Serverless computing is becoming increasingly popular among attackers due to its emerging application paradigms. Unfortunately, conventional security tools are not easily transferable to serverless applications and existing serverless security solutions are inadequate. To address this issue, a team of researchers - Deepak Sirone Jegan, Liang Wang, Siddhant Bhagat, Thomas Ristenpart and Michael Swift - has developed an extensible security framework called SecLambda. This framework uses both local function state and global application state to perform complex security tasks for safeguarding an application. The team demonstrates how SecLambda can be used to achieve control flow integrity, credential protection and rate limiting in serverless applications. They evaluate the performance overhead and security of SecLambda using realistic open-source applications and conclude that it can mitigate several attacks while introducing relatively low performance overhead. This paper presents a comprehensive solution for guarding serverless applications against potential threats that could compromise their integrity or confidentiality.