Cloud Computing, Flexibility, Security and Wikileaks

I read two interesting articles in the past 10 days that highlight the security benefits corporations can gain by embracing the cloud. It's somewhat ironic how the first article involved Wikileaks, the infamous website known best for leaking classified US and foreign government documents, seeking refuge in the cloud by moving onto Amazon's E2C cloud computing service while the second article explains how Amazon's ability to scale was instrumental in protecting it from attack by supporters of Wikileaks.

Some back story might be in order: On November 28, 2010 Wikileaks, already well known for leaking classified cables of Foreign governments, released the first in a series of leaks or US government documents. There was a near immediate uproar in America and two clear sides emerged rapidly. On one side were those who believed the leaking was at a minimum, harmful to the US and in poor taste, and many even going so far as to call it treasonous. On the other side of the issue were those who defended Wikileaks and who believe that open dissemination of information will ultimately lead to a healthier society.

As the battle raged in the media, hackers tried taking matters into their own hands. Within a matter of days Wikileaks servers were overwhelmed by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. Wikileaks quickly moved there server a couple times, but each time were taken offline by the DDOS attack. Eventually Wikileaks settled on Amazon's E2C cloud computer service. The attacks against this new host were entirely unsuccessful as Amazon was able to add capacity rapidly to counteract the spike in traffic from the DDOS attack. On December 2, 2010, however, Amazon, bowing to public pressure and the threat of a boycott, removed Wikileaks from their servers and refused to host the site.  (Around the same time, MasterCard and Visa froze Wikileaks accounts and stopped processing donations/payments to the company).

In response to Wikileaks being booted from Amazon servers, hackers who supported Wikileaks embarked upon a campaign of retribution. On December 8, 2010, Visa and Mastercard websites were attacked and temporarily taken offline by supports of Wikileaks in response to those companies ceasing to work with Wikileaks. Amazon was similarly attacked, however, the web giant was largely unaffected. One anonymous hacker tweeted "We can not attach Amazon, currently. The previous schedule was to do so, but we don’t have enough forces." It seems that no matter how much traffic they sent to Amazon's servers, the company was able to respond with additional capacity to counter the attack. 

This episode shows the incredible flexibility available with cloud computing (as well as Amazon E2C's resilience).  As more companies move into the cloud, I would expect to see the effectiveness of DDOS attacks abate somewhat.

Good Talk,
Tom 

[Sources: http://centerstance.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/cloud-computing-security-and-amazon-why-elasticity-matters/, http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/can-cloud-computing-save-you-ddos-attacks-306, Wikipedia.com]