Cloud based computing, think you're secured? Think again.

[DJofSD]

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/

In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook.

In many ways, this was all my fault. My accounts were daisy-chained together. Getting into Amazon let my hackers get into my Apple ID account, which helped them get into Gmail, which gave them access to Twitter. Had I used two-factor authentication for my Google account, it’s possible that none of this would have happened, because their ultimate goal was always to take over my Twitter account and wreak havoc. Lulz.

Had I been regularly backing up the data on my MacBook, I wouldn’t have had to worry about losing more than a year’s worth of photos, covering the entire lifespan of my daughter, or documents and e-mails that I had stored in no other location.

Those security lapses are my fault, and I deeply, deeply regret them.

Read the rest of the article for important discussions of the flaws with security in a cloud centric world.

[ArlJim78]

I just read where Steve Wozniak was speaking out against cloud computing. I have never been comfortable with the concept and think it's a disaster waiting to happen.

[HUSKER55]

I have no idea how to do this but when the neighbor girl was here, she had an extra drive on her computer for playing on the internet and she had a program that created random passwords about 16 charactors long.

Her point was that the hard drive with her data never went on the internet that wasn't for business and the other drive was shredded everytime she was finished so she didn't have any problems.

I hope this helps but like I said I don't know how to do it.

Perhaps one of you guru's can give advise? I think this cloud base thing is going to stay and we had better be for figureing a very secure way to deal with it.

[DJofSD]

I don't know exactly what the neighbor girl had or was doing. I can take a guess but that's not going to help.

One of the bottom line issues with any security but more so with the cloud is you are only as strong as the weakest link. Especially when it is made easy for the nefarious to plunder. Same or similar account names, linking of accounts, using the same simple passwords, but, even more important but less obvious, lazy, cheap or unknowlegdeable security administrators. As illustrated in the article, it just takes one small breach then the entire damn will eventually burst.

Companies do not publish any information about how they "protect" their systems, access to and use of their systems or your personal information. While there are some protections due to SOX, those are more for the company's benefit, not their customers.

[JustRalph]

This guy was a victim of Apple and Amazon, and himself.

he didn't have 2nd factor/two factor security turned on, on anything.

He blew it as much as apple and amazon did.