Zombie Cloud: A tool for cyber attackers

Source: Internet
Author: User
Keywords Cloud services Cloud security cloud security
Cloud services make it easier to remotely uninstall the software on your computer and change the data on your computer. Following Google and Amazon, Apple last week also took the bus for cloud services--Apple provides users with inexpensive online storage that allows users to access music, documents, and other files on any Apple device via the ICloud Apple Cloud. But cloud services can also be used for cyber attacks, spam and cyber fraud. "There are only a handful of cyber attacks, and most cyber attacks are hidden and not discovered," said Clark, a student at the University of Delft in Holland. If the cloud service provider does not take active steps to prevent similar incidents, such incidents will become more and more. "Amazon offers the world's largest cloud service platform, which provides not only basic online storage but also virtual computing--users can rent" virtual computers "as they want. Clark and his colleagues are studying how cloud services can be used to build botnets. Botnets are infected computer networks controlled by network attackers. The traditional botnet has to control their computers without their knowledge, and it takes a long time to complete the construction. But by buying cloud space with stolen credit cards, you can instantly build a cloud zombie network, or a zombie cloud. Clark demonstrated his findings last month at the Closer cloud computing conference in Noordwijkerhout, Holland. "This construction is fast. "Traditional botnets will have to wait several months to infect a large number of computers," he says. "To verify how easy it is to build a zombie cloud, Clark and his colleagues have spent € 100 leasing 20 Virtual computers from a leading cloud service provider and using these virtual computers to attack their Web servers." They first attempted a DDoS attack, a distributed denial of service attack, which sent large amounts of data to an attack target. The zombie cloud submits 2 000 page requests to the server every second, and the server crashes after 10 seconds. Clark also built a larger zombie cloud to simulate "click fraud"-clicking on a pay-per-click AD link to cheat the clicks. Advertising companies typically prevent "click fraud" by tracking the IP addresses of each computer and blocking the frequent clicks of the same IP address. Clark's team used 100 virtual computers with independent IP addresses to build a zombie cloud that bypassed the advertising agency's precautions. Cloud service providers did not discover and shut down zombie cloud attacks. So, has anyone ever used a zombie cloud? It is rumored that the recent attack on Sony PlayStation's Web site came from Amazon's cloud services server, where attackers leased Amazon's virtual computers using stolen credit cards. But the news has not been fully confirmed. "We have detected spam in the cloud service environment, but not on a large scale," said Symantec.cloud, senior analyst at Symantec Cloud. He believes that the virtual on the cloud platformComputers may even be controlled by ordinary botnets, because cloud users generally do not use anti-virus software. "Thomas Roth, the German Korogen (Cologne) City network security researcher, recently showed how to use Amazon's servers to crack WiFi passwords, and he also believes that the lack of anti-virus protection on the cloud platform is a problem. "I think Amazon should provide a system for vulnerability assessment and virus scanning," he said. "Amazon claims:" Our network services are used in a variety of ways, artificial and automatic, to prevent abuse of services. Our automated systems are in place to detect and stop attackers before they exit the service platform. "But Mr Wood warns that countries with lax Internet regulation are vulnerable to cloud attacks." "Russia and China will soon have a cloud service platform similar to the Amazon cloud." You can put malware, illegal software on them, they will never let you offline. How does editorial recommendation look at cloud security issues? Big talk It phase eighth: The bloodshed caused by Amazon Cloud service network issue domain Name Service Strategy July global domain name Cloud service platform Online qin Rob position "cloud security" market cloud security Company-Panda Safety release latest 2012 product line Cloud Safe Road where data protection is the key "editor: Shang Micro TEL: (010) 68476606 "Original: Zombie Cloud: A sharp weapon of cyber attackers return to network security home page
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