Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Study Guide

Chapter 9. Security in Cloud Computing

If you haven’t seen the 1987 Rob Reiner movie The Princess Bride, stop what you’re doing and go watch it right now. One particularly funny line has since become a meme: the Sicilian criminal mastermind Vizzini (portrayed by Wallace Shawn) uses the word inconceivable over and over again, for things that truly are…conceivable. Finally, swordsman Inigo Montoya, played brilliantly by a young Mandy Patinkin, looks at him and says, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

I couldn’t help thinking of that line while researching definitions of cloud computing. Most people understand the word cloud about as fully as they understand nuclear fusion, or anything Ozzy Osbourne says. But ECC has devoted a full chapter to security in cloud computing, and so have I. I’ll do my best to translate it all into common sense throughout this short but information-packed chapter. And nobody even think of quoting Inigo back to ECC—I’m sure they know what both words mean. Maybe.

Cloud Computing

I have a couple of friends who are really involved in cloud computing for a major enterprise network, so I asked them, “What’s the biggest misconception surrounding cloud computing?” Both answered with versions of the same question: “Just which type and model of cloud computing are you asking about?”

A lot of us simply don’t have a clue what cloud computing really is. We think we know, because we’re smart, and because we’ve all uploaded ...