Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2013. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Marc Gaffan, Co-founder and VP of Marketing & Business Development at Incapsula
2013 Will See More DDoS Attacks Launched from the Cloud
Hackers
and attackers have been using Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks to
bring down sites for years. The underplaying principle of a DDoS attack is
directing enough firepower at a single website to exhaust its networking or
computing resourcing, bringing it to a halt. To bring together the required
resources to mount an attack, hackers have typically been using Botnets, armies
of personal hijacked computers that have been taken over and used for malicious
purposes.
In
2013, Incapsula expects to see this change as hackers begin to leverage the
cloud for their attacks. In fact, we're already starting to see it. The volume
of a single DDoS attack is constantly growing - now easily surpassing 30
Gigabit per second (this is equal to 30,000 home PCs fully utilizing a 1Mbps
uplink connection). Many people are wondering who has flocked up so many
hijacked PCs to execute such attacks. The answer is: It is coming from the
cloud.
The
benefit of the cloud is that a three person start-up can spin-up a cluster of
1000 cloud-servers, within 10 minutes, from their garage, but the downside is
that so can hackers. In fact, hackers do not even pay for the infrastructure
since they can hack their way to it. This high-end cloud infrastructure has
been optimized for the best possible performance and utilization and is most
likely sitting on the Internet's backbone to gain the best networking speeds.
Suppose
one of these three guys from our example start-up has their cloud account's
username and password stolen, the thief now has access to an infinite amount of
computing and networking infrastructure. If a vulnerability is exploited in one
of those servers and it's taken over, the hacker now has the technological
equivalent of a Howitzer cannon at their disposal.
The unfortunate reality is that hackers can now
misappropriate On Demand Cloud Infrastructure and turn it into a weapon of mass
disruption.
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