Security issues relating to inadequate authentication in MapReduce applications

In this paper, we discuss security issues relating to inadequate authentication in MapReduce applications. We examine MapReduce applications deployed in the cloud, as this environment significantly increases security risks to the applications. We outline a generic model of MapReduce computation and then perform a detailed threat analysis of this model. Then, based on this threat analysis, we produce a set of security requirements for the design of an authentication solution for MapReduce applications. We then review related work against these requirements, and conclude that most of the work surveyed does not address two of our requirements, which we believe to be of significant importance when deploying MapReduce in the cloud.