Network Intrusion detection and Countermeasure Election in virtual network systems (NICE) are used to establish a defense-in-depth intrusion detection framework. For better attack detection, NICE incorporates attack graph analytical procedures into the intrusion detection processes. We must note that the design of NICE does not intend to improve any of the existing intrusion detection algorithms; indeed, NICE employs a reconfigurable virtual networking approach to detect and counter the

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... to compromise VMs, thus preventing zombie VMs. NICE includes two main phases: deploy a lightweight mirroring-based network intrusion detection agent (NICE-A) on each cloud server to capture and analyze cloud traffic. A NICE-A periodically scans the virtual system vulnerabilities within a cloud server to establish Scenario Attack Graph (SAGs), and then based on the severity of identified vulnerability toward the collaborative attack goals, NICE will decide whether or not to put a VM in network inspection state. Once a VM enters inspection state, Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) is applied, and/or virtual network reconfigurations can be deployed to the inspecting VM to make the potential attack behaviors prominent.