Robin Hood Gone Evil: Loophole Leading To Cloud Pickpocketing Identified Researchers at North Carolina State university and University of Oregon have proposed a jaw-dropping price tag for performing heavy duty cloud computing task – as low as zero dollars. Experiments reveal that cloud-based web browsers can be exploited to hijack the underlying computational power, and that as well, in total anonymity. The result could be as unforgivable as cloud computing time theft of mammoth proportions. The pickpocketed resources, once fallen into the wrong hands, can be used for just about anything, including brute force password crack attempts, denial of service attacks and other genres
denial of service
17 million cyber-attacks blocked between April and June by secure cloud hosting provider London, UK – July 24, 2012 – Secure cloud hosting company, FireHost, has today revealed the latest statistical analysis of attacks successfully blocked by its servers located at data centers in the US and Europe. During the period of April to June 2012, the web applications, databases and websites of FireHost’s customers – spread across 33 countries worldwide – were protected from a total of 17 million cyber attacks, of which more than two million were categorized as the most serious kind of attack, and among FireHost’s ‘Superfecta’.
Akamai Introduces New Cloud Defense Solutions Akamai Technologies, Inc. unveiled new cloud defense architecture aimed at protecting customers from increasing number of sophisticated Web attacks. Enhancements include improved protection from distributed denial of service (DdoS) attacks as well as improved cloud firewall featuring advanced vulnerability scanning and custom rules for additional protection against application layer attacks, the company said in a press release. Companies worldwide incur estimated losses of one trillion dollars a year, according to antivirus company McAfee, and Akamai unveils a new cloud security solution to help global business reduce financial damages from the growing number cyber attacks.
Practically Speaking About Cloud Computing Before getting into the nitty gritty of what we did in our projects for hardening the cloud servers hosted by us, we would like to emphasize the following, so that these can be firmly embedded in the mind set of readers. First, the way cloud computing is attracting attention is mind boggling. Enterprises have started adopting to cloud concept where in they go for sharing public infrastructure. Having started this trend, it will go without any stopping in future. Traditional Security measures practiced in-house are not enough in the new trend. Second, the inherent nature
When you hear the rumble of thunder, then you know the storm is near. Two security researchers warned that cloud-based denial-of-service attacks are looming on the horizon. With $6 and a homemade “Thunder Clap” program, security experts David Bryan and Michael Anderson managed to take down their client’s server with the help of Amazon’s EC2 cloud infrastructure. The cloud-based denial-of-service attack was part of a DefCon presentation called, Cloud Computing, a Weapon of Mass Destruction? In the description for their DefCon talk, they wrote, “We have been using the cloud computing environment to test real world scenarios for different types
