Hackers see the cloud as ripe territory

Is the cloud a hacker's paradise? A survey at last month's DefCon hacking conference paints that picture.

Sponsored by security vendor Fortify Software, the survey asked 100 hackers who attended DefCon about security in the cloud. A sizable 96 percent said they believe the cloud opens up more hacking opportunities, while 89 percent said cloud vendors aren't doing enough to address cybersecurity issues.

Among the hackers surveyed, 45 percent said they had already tried to exploit vulnerabilities in the cloud. Although only 12 percent admitted to hacking into cloud systems for the money, that's still a significant percentage to ponder for companies moving to the cloud, according to Fortify. A Gartner study from earlier this year found that by 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no back-end IT assets of their own, planning instead to store everything all in the cloud.

Drilling down further, 21 percent of those questioned see software as a service (SaaS) cloud systems as the most vulnerable. Among the hackers who'd snooped around the cloud, 33 percent said they found vulnerabilities in the public DNS (Domain Name System), 16 percent have hacked into log files, and 12 percent have been able to check out communications profiles.
"More than anything, this research confirms our ongoing observations that cloud vendors--as well as the IT software industry as a whole--need to redouble their governance and security assurance strategies when developing solutions, whether cloud-based or not, as all IT systems will eventually have to support a cloud resource," Fortify chief products officer Barmak Meftah said in a statement.

Comments

Email On Deck: A disposable email address that works

Today, Team Inforpioneer brings an interesting Email service for our reader which will definitely help our readers to improve their internet security and will benefit in some other ways. Here is a short description of this service. EmailOnDeck.com is the premier site for all things relating to temporary, disposable and throwaway email addresses. We want to help you avoid SPAM, protect your online privacy, and stop you from having to give away your personal email address to every company and person on the internet who insists on you giving it to them. We work hard and will continue to work hard to give you a disposable email address that works with any site or app. We hope to help give you back the control of deciding who you want to give your personal info to. Temporary emails are perfect for any transaction where you want to improve your online privacy. Use them when you buy or sell Bitcoins or trade cryptocurrency, at exchanges, or locally. They can be used for QA tes...

A Brief History of 9 Popular Blogging Platforms

E ven though Microsoft’s spell check insists that “blog” and “blogger” are not real words, they’ve been been in the dictionary since 2003 . Blogs and their platforms have a lengthy history. The beginnings of blogging was a time not unlike today: Plaid was in style, a beloved rock star had passed, and the Internet was just gaining momentum on college campuses. In 1994, then Swarthmore College student Justin Hall started an online diary called Justin’s Links from the Underground . The site, which first started as a guide to the web, soon became an account of Hall’s life, and earned him the surely coveted title of pioneer blogger. Three years later, Jorn Barger would coin the term “weblog,” and it’s short form, “blog,” was later coined by Peter Merholz. Today, the web is comprised of millions of blogs covering every topic imaginable. Here is short history of some of the medium’s most popular platforms. 1. Open Diary Founded in 1998 by Bruce Ableson, Open Diary was the first website that ...

SEO Optimizing A Website For Improved Value

SEO or search engine optimization is something that every web owner and creator should be aware of. Even if a website owner hires an expert to carry out the online marketing, understanding the very basics and how it really can improve a websites performance and popularity is important. Simply put, optimizing a website is important and is built around keywords that are valuable to a website and to the products or services it is trying to provide. By focusing on main keywords or key phrases for a business, and expanding on them over time, can improve the amount of visitors a website receives, in turn increasing profits or simply improving its popularity if it is an information website. SEO is valuable, and means a way of making a site appear at a higher ranking in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AOL etc. Using this important type of online marketing can reap great benefits. It takes time to learn and time to complete, and is a constant job to keep a website performing well above co...

Info Pioneer

Search This Blog