Technology: Storm Cloud Thunder

[don]

By QUENTIN HARDY

The cutting edge of the Web just bled a little.

On Friday night, lightning in Virginia took out part of Amazon’s cloud computing service, called Amazon Web Services, which hundreds of companies use for data storage and computation. Well-known sites like Netflix, Pinterest and Instagram were not accessible for hours. There was little information for customers about what had happened, or even whether user data was safe.

The interruption underlined how businesses and consumers are increasingly exposed to unforeseen risks and wrenching disruptions as they increasingly embrace life in the cloud. It was also a big blow to what is probably the fastest-growing part of the media business, start-ups on the social Web that attract millions of users seemingly overnight.

Besides Internet-connected computers, tablets and smartphones, which people rely on daily, consumers and businesses are connected to the Web through everything from cars and appliances to utility monitors and surveillance cameras. How well the systems behind these are built, and how they handle unforeseen disruptions, will increasingly affect the larger economy.

Amazon has built a thriving business in cloud computing, with a range of customers including Intercontinental Hotels, Fox Entertainment, Unilever, Spotify, as well as 187 government agencies and hundreds of small start-ups looking for the cheapest possible computing.

None of these big customers reported any service disruptions. While it was not clear if they were using the Amazon center that was crippled, analysts said the disruption would cause renewed scrutiny of their dependence on cloud computing.

“The way companies view it is in terms of reliability generally,” said Michael Chui, a senior fellow at McKinsey & Company. Big customers of Amazon, he said, “have the opportunity to shape the marketplace and make demands that make products better. They will push for improvements.”

They will also have another option. On Thursday, Google said it would offer computing over the Internet at half the price of Amazon.

The weekend’s disruption happened after a lightning storm caused the power to fail at the Amazon Web Services center in Northern Virginia containing thousands of computer servers. For reasons Amazon was still unsure of on Sunday, the data center’s backup generator also failed.

By midday Saturday, Amazon said in a statement that it had restored service “to most of our impacted customers, and continue to work to restore service to our remaining impacted customers,” adding, “we will share more details on this event in the coming days.” The company had no further comment.

It was at least the second major failure for Amazon in that area. In April 2011, a problem in Amazon’s networking at a nearby data center took down a number of applications and popular Web sites, including Reddit and Quora, for more than a day.

To be sure, Amazon Web Services held up better than many utilities affected by the storm, which left more than four million homes and businesses without power on the East Coast. By Sunday, some Instagram customers in the Washington area could, through their cellphones, share pictures on the Web before they had lights or safe drinking water.

Netflix, along with Pinterest and Instagram, did not respond to requests for comment Sunday. Netflix was able to restore service in a couple of hours. Many more Amazon customers, including the small start-ups that make up the bulk of its customers, did not report any problems, but may have scrambled to make sure their systems were secure.

“We were late at work, playing an online video game that went down, then got a notification from our own system that it was starting to fail,” said Benjamin Coe, the founder of Attachments.me, a start-up in San Francisco that connects e-mail attachments to online data storage services. “We had built for redundancy, but our system failed in two areas, making it hard for the third to work.”

Mr. Coe said he stayed up until 4 a.m. fixing the problem. It was, he said, the price of working cheaply with a service that enabled his six-person company to potentially serve millions of customers, who he said would be understanding about brief shutdowns.

“For a consumer product that is free, there is an understanding all around that things can fail occasionally,” he said. “If you were flying a plane or something, this would be totally unacceptable.”

The ability to deal with failures has long been a feature of any computing system, but like much else in the cloud, there are no common standards to guide how much protection against disaster is enough. Many start-ups appear not to take advantage of more expensive redundancy features in Amazon, like swapping data between the East Coast and West Coast Amazon facilities.

Bigger companies are moving to the cloud as well, but may now look at Amazon Web Services as a stopgap as much as a primary provider.

“Maybe 15 percent of our customers now keep their data with us in the cloud, but in three years that could be 75 percent,” said Carl Bass, chief executive of Autodesk, a leading maker of design software. Most of that data is stored on Amazon servers for now, he said, but the company is weighing managing its own cloud, as customers use cheap cloud computing to generate huge numbers of design simulations.

“It’ll cost $10 million to get started, and we’ll probably still rely on A.W.S. to handle big workloads,” he said. “We’re going to need tools for infinite computing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/02/te...ref=technology

[lektrode]

Re: Technology: Storm Cloud Thunder

they can have/keep all this 'cloud computing' stuff, far as i'm concerned - and all the continuously automatically 'updated' software, with its continuous 'upgrade' treadmill, that eventually leaves one no choice but to replace otherwise perfectly operating hardware after all the updates/upgrades start feeding on each other, all the while gobbling up memory/resources - aka: the wintel conspiracy

my eudora4.0 still works great, my firefox3.0 still works great and my windaz xp2.0 still works great.
and i OWN IT ALL OUTRIGHT, with no licensing, rent, maintenance/support fees required!
they can float around up there in the clouds if they want to, but i'm staying down here on the ground.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=155965721
Cybercrime Disclosures Rare Despite New SEC Rule

AP June 29, 2012, 12:45 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hackers broke into computers at hotel giant Wyndham Worldwide Corp. three times in two years and stole credit card information belonging to hundreds of thousands of customers. Wyndham didn't report the break-in in corporate filings even though the Securities and Exchange Commission wants companies to inform investors of cybercrimes.

Amid whispers of sensational online break-ins resulting in millions of dollars in losses, it remains remarkably difficult to identify corporate victims of cybercrimes. Companies are afraid that going public would damage their reputations, sink stock prices or spark lawsuits.

The chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is adding a provision to cybersecurity legislation that would strengthen the reporting requirement. The SEC's cybersecurity guidance issued in October is not mandatory. It was intended to update for the digital age a requirement that companies report "material risks" that investors want to know.

Rockefeller's measure would direct the SEC's five commissioners to make clear when companies must disclose cyber breaches and spell out steps they are taking to protect their computer networks from electronic intrusions.

"It's crucial that companies are disclosing to investors how cybersecurity risks affect their bottom lines, and what they are doing to address those risks," Rockefeller said Friday.
The SEC recently challenged Internet retailer Amazon's decision to omit from its 2011 annual report references to the online theft of customer data held by Zappos, an online shoe company owned by Amazon. Amazon eventually agreed to modify the statement slightly, according to correspondence between the company and the SEC. But the company still argued that the Zappos attack was not covered by the commission's cybersecurity guidance because it had no material impact on Amazon's business.

Cybercrime is rampant and not confined to the United States. The head of Britain's domestic spy agency said this week that cybersecurity ranks alongside terrorism as one of the United Kingdom's most pressing security challenges. In one recent case, an unspecified, London-listed company hit by a cyberattack incurred revenue losses of $1.2 billion, MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans said in rare public remarks in London. He did not identify the company or say which country was behind the attack. The U.S. has said China and Russia are the governments most frequently engaged in such hacking.

"What is at stake is not just our government secrets but also the safety and security of our infrastructure, the intellectual property that underpins our future prosperity, and the commercially sensitive information that is the lifeblood of our companies and corporations," Evans said.

Research by a cybersecurity expert shows dozens of Fortune 500 companies have lost a wide range of valuable information to cybercrimes, including intellectual property, bank account credentials, restricted data about patients of pharmaceutical companies and internal legal records.

Rodney Joffe of Neustar, an Internet infrastructure management company in Virginia, monitors networks used by online criminal groups and traces the origin of stolen information. He found evidence that 162 out 168 companies in the manufacturing, chemical and transportation sectors had been compromised. The names of the companies are being kept confidential for proprietary reasons, he said.

"No one is safe. Everyone is compromised," said Joffe, Neustar's senior technologist. "When people tell you, 'We are protected as a company,' they are really fooling themselves."
The SEC isn't tracking how many companies comply with its cybersecurity guidance. But publicly traded companies historically have resisted supplying information about cyber incidents because it highlights their weak spots, said Peter Toren, a former federal prosecutor with the Justice Department's computer crime division.

"It just doesn't look good," Toren said.

The breach of Wyndham's computers was described in a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit filed this week against the company and three subsidiaries for alleged security failures that led to the three data breaches between April 2008 and January 2010. The failures caused "the export of hundreds of thousands of consumers' payment card account information to an Internet domain address registered in Russia" and millions of dollars in fraudulent charges on consumers' accounts, the FTC said.

Wyndham didn't mention the break-ins in its 2011 annual report or prior securities filings, according to an Associated Press review of the records.

Wyndham's 2011 annual report said the "hospitality industry is under increasing attack by cyber-criminals in the U.S. and other jurisdictions in which we operate" and noted that it was involved in "claims relating to information security and data privacy." Wyndham spent $13 million more on security improvements and expects to spend as much as $100 million in 2012 to guard against "the increasingly aggressive global threat from cyber-criminals," according to the report.

Wyndham said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press that it "fully complied with SEC regulations in regards to the disclosure of material events." In the statement, Wyndham said the incidents were "previously reported," an apparent reference to notices to consumers that were published on the company's website. The company also said the FTC's claims were without merit. (???)
Network infrastructure company Verisign reported in late October, just a few weeks after the SEC issued the guidance, that there had been several successful cyberattacks against its corporate networks in 2010. In the filing, Verisign said the company's management had not been informed of the attacks until September 2011.

LinkedIn, the online networking service, publicly announced on June 12 the online theft of 6.5 million user passwords. It said the announcement complies with its obligations to the SEC, but it has yet to file a report about the incident with the commission.

The new SEC guidance puts pressure on companies to decide whether to disclose a breach or keep it secret, said Jody Westby of Global Cyber Risk, a consulting firm. But she said the demand for information amounts to locking the door after the house has been robbed.

"The SEC would have done better to require all public companies to say whether they've taken actions to implement a security program," Westby said.
__
Associated Press researcher Julie Reed contributed to this report.
__
Online:
SEC disclosure guidance: http://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin...nce-topic2.htm

[don]

Re: Technology: Storm Cloud Thunder

Always felt the idea of clouds was to put us on a monthly fee basis for computer use. It is/will be introduced much like other monthly fees that most have been conditioned to see as "part of life's overhead". The general approach is to exaggerate the benefits while minimizing the fees. Cable TV is an excellent example, which began at very low cost while providing hardly anything - only better reception. That's what I call capital-intensive, long-range planning.

[lektrode]

Re: Technology: Storm Cloud Thunder

BINGO! mr D.
once they get the needle in ya, its real hard to yank it out, too.
mere words cannot express the feeling i had when i dumped the 'deluxe' cable pkg of 300channels of continuous commercials, stripped it down to the basic dozen or so (more like 30, but they want to minimize the value of the bottom level of service) + the roadrunner turbo - and went to streaming media service for the entertainment functions - a net savings of almost 40% - with an immeasurable increase in satisfaction.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Technology: Storm Cloud Thunder

Always felt the idea of clouds was to put us on a monthly fee basis for computer use. It is/will be introduced much like other monthly fees that most have been conditioned to see as "part of life's overhead". The general approach is to exaggerate the benefits while minimizing the fees. Cable TV is an excellent example, which began at very low cost while providing hardly anything - only better reception. That's what I call capital-intensive, long-range planning.

Others see a government conspiracy against general-purpose computers and a wide-open internet.
http://www.1day1vid.com/?p=653

[c1ue]

Re: Technology: Storm Cloud Thunder

The cloud has its place, but most people misunderstand the business basis for it.

The real business benefit of cloud is the ability to quickly scale. For aspiring internet companies, this is great.

However, for established companies, the benefits of cloud computing are much less clear.

It may seem cheaper at any given time, but cloud services essentially act like banks for computer hardware: sell CPU/memory services short, but buy hardware long. The bet being made is that the initial losses by selling CPU/memory services short term will be offset by slower transmission to customers of cheaper hardware/bandwidth costs long term as well as maximizing high volume purchasing discounts.

The distinction is further blurred between public cloud services like Amazon vs. private cloud services - where the cloud computing center is exclusive to one company but pools much of that company's computing needs. Private cloud can make economic sense as the security issues are less than public - though still greater than standalones.

[lektrode]

Re: Technology: Storm Cloud Thunder

http://www.1day1vid.com/?p=653

The talk is about 35-40 mins long and worth watching to remind yourself how much governments are trying to put barriers on computers, and that the copyright war is just the beginning. In a risk-adverse society, politicians are elected to make people feel safer, and they will continue to pass laws to restrict the freedoms that current computers allow. But there is a contradiction there, as “general computers” were never made to be restricted: being open/tweakable is their reason to exist in the first place.

this guy has got a VERY INTERESTING presentation (listening to it now)

the nanny state snake (or is it the evil squid?) is begining to chomp on its own tail....

never mind when we see stuff like this: http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_1_rush_oreilly.html

and this:
http://www.alternet.org/story/153575...usual_in_2012/

[lektrode]

Re: Technology: Storm Cloud Thunder

EXCELLENT observations, mr c1ue
appreciate the bottom line (and instant) analysis

[don]

Re: Technology: Storm Cloud Thunder

EXCELLENT observations, mr c1ue
appreciate the bottom line (and instant) analysis

For a small time user like me - I've used the Adobe Suite forever, way back when they were separate and infrequently harmonious programs - on Mac 5s that are never wired into the internet. I used a cheap PC for that. When I see Adobe going cloud the heartburn begins.

[reggie]

Re: Technology: Storm Cloud Thunder

Always felt the idea of clouds was to put us on a monthly fee basis for computer use. It is/will be introduced much like other monthly fees that most have been conditioned to see as "part of life's overhead". The general approach is to exaggerate the benefits while minimizing the fees. Cable TV is an excellent example, which began at very low cost while providing hardly anything - only better reception. That's what I call capital-intensive, long-range planning.

"Cloud" emanated out of defense department think tanks. It refers to a controlled information-set designed to control decisions, and therefore actions, of those subjected to the controlled information-set.

Originally Posted by T&B/1day1vid.com http://www.1day1vid.com/?p=653

The talk is about 35-40 mins long and worth watching to remind yourself how much governments are trying to put barriers on computers, and that the copyright war is just the beginning. In a risk-adverse society, politicians are elected to make people feel safer, and they will continue to pass laws to restrict the freedoms that current computers allow. But there is a contradiction there, as “general computers” were never made to be restricted: being open/tweakable is their reason to exist in the first place.

Computer networks were NEVER ever designed to grant the public "freedoms". But I agree that computers "were never made to be restricted", and so-called "openess" is exactly what is required to create and maintain a controlled society.