Hacking: The Next Generation

Summary

Cloud computing brings about many innovations and advances in the information technology realm for which executives and organizations around the world have been clamoring. Cloud computing allows organizations to focus on their core business competencies while ensuring that their IT infrastructures are flexible enough to meet the demands of current and future users. Cloud computing does not solve all of today’s security problems, however; in fact, it creates new security problems that must be dealt with in addition to the existing problems. Cloud computing does not magically protect application logic from abuse or prevent attacks against the application level. Uploading the most hardened virtual machine will not prevent attacks against the web-based management consoles that are used to administer the virtual machines. The power of the cloud can be harnessed against other clouds, driving each to the limit of its performance and functionality.

High availability comes at a cost; this cost can be high if an attacker chooses to launch a sustained, data-intensive attack against the cloud provider. Fortunately, newly emerging attacks against cloud systems will keep security engineers on their toes as they fight to defend your data and application logic in the cloud.