ClusterX: Adaptive Collaborative Scheduling of Layered User-Proxy Mapping to Enhance DDoS Defense in Distributed Clusters

In the contemporary digital landscape, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks pose a significant threat to the availability and integrity of online services. As cloud services and network infrastructures increasingly adopt distributed architectures, the challenge of defending against these attacks has become more complex. This paper introduces ClusterX, a novel two-tiered scheduling framework designed to enhance DDoS defense and service quality in distributed clusters. ClusterX incorporates Moving Target Defense (MTD) principles with a hierarchical, collaborative approach, featuring Program Chairs and Area Chairs that dynamically manage user-proxy mappings to counteract the fluid nature of DDoS attacks. The architecture of ClusterX is underpinned by a proactive transfer mechanism, which leverages user-service activity profiles to intelligently redistribute user traffic across clusters. This mechanism ensures that no single cluster becomes a bottleneck, maintaining low latency and high service quality even under high traffic conditions. Program Chairs oversee the global traffic distribution, while Area Chairs execute localized scheduling decisions, working in tandem to prevent traffic congestion and enhance the resilience of the network. Through extensive simulations and real-world experiments, we demonstrate the effectiveness of ClusterX in detecting and mitigating DDoS attacks, while maintaining high service availability. The results highlight the superiority of our approach in adapting to the dynamic nature of modern cyber threats and the benefits of a coordinated defense strategy in distributed cloud environments. ClusterX represents a significant advancement in the field of network security, offering a robust and adaptive solution to one of the most pressing challenges in cybersecurity today.