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Amazon Servers Used In Sony Playstation Hack
the simurgh writes "Amazon servers may have been used to carry out the massive Playstation hack that compromised the personal information of more than 100 million Playstation Network users. According to a report from Bloomberg, sources close to the ongoing investigation say the attack was mounted from Amazon Web Service's cloud computing platform."
Obviously. Who is better equipped to take down Sony than the elusive Amazon?
Will there be a thunderstorm?
Is it an Anonymous Cloud or Anonymous' Cloud?
So if the attack came from a cloud, then wouldn't it be a lightning attack instead of a "hacking" attack?
We really need to get this internet meteorology right.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Revenue from cloud services: 1.5%
Retail revenue lost from consumers who will forever link one of the greatest breaches in history with the Amazon brand: Priceless
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It will be interesting to see what sony does with this if it is true. I mean, it is not like they care about burning bridges. I could totally see them suing Amazon, if only to give them a PR black eye.
Thieves were recently caught shoplifting. They wearing clothes from Gap, calling into question the influence and security of such clothing.
Yes, the story makes about as much sense as that...
I suspect most all of the people that are amazon customers only vaguely know what's going on and won't bother to learn the detail on the hosting provider for the attackers systems.
I suspect the minority that are that inclined almost all know that in this specific scenario, Amazon was just a hosting provider and understand that means they aren't particularly responsible for what happened any more than AT&T would be responsible for a house downloading a video illegally.
Sure, there is probably a very small population that will stumble upon the facts and falsely presume Amazon is an evil company for cracking into Sony's stuff (as opposed to an evil company for other reasons). I have a feeling that change in revenue would be lost in the noise and small compared to any arbitrary boycott over seemingly small and/or inane things Amazon does on any given day.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Considering how Amazon has become known for caving to the slightest pressure from law enforcement or even just a nosy senator, to host such an attack from EC2 seems extraordinarily stupid.
It would make much more sense to launch it from somewhere hosted by a company that doesn't have a reputation for giving up their customer's data and shutting down even legitimate stuff that happens to run afoul of their vague guidelines.
Looks like the "cloud" rained on PS3 network's parade, so to speak. Hyuk-Hyuk-Hyuk!!! (Imitates Goofy Disney character)
Wait a minute... Amazon's cloud crashed 4/21, the day after Sony realized they'd been pwned and took down PSN.
Is there something Amazon isn't saying, like maybe they were pwned too??
So they used Amazon. They could just as well have used any other of the 1000's of 'rent a vm' providers out there. But I guess it's news just because it's amazon.
If amazon has any access logs they will probably find out that the attackers either bounced themselves though another vm host or though some form of anonymiser service and they will be just as surprised by that as they are with this news. "What? The hacker didn't attack Sony by directly using his own computer?!"
Why does the headline differ from the summary? Is it that hard to write a headline that isn't sensationalist?
> sources close to the ongoing investigation say the attack was mounted from Amazon Web Service's cloud computing platform ..
What evidence is there that Amazon Cloud was the source and why the need to keep the source of these allegations anonymous.
Web Services cloud- computing unit was used by hackers in last month’s attack against Sony Corp. (6758)’s online entertainment systems, according to a person with knowledge of the matter
I see, asome 'person'
So the hackers chose to bounce their packets off a server rented from Amazon. They could have chosen a server rented from a thousand others. Hell, they could have done it with a server rented from me. Thankfully, they did not. But really who the hell cares?
An attack from Anonymous? Pshaw, yeah right.
We all know Amazon really did the hack themselves, because they were mad they couldn't get Sony on the One-Click patent, since PS3 users don't use mice.
Presumably, they chose Amazon's network as they were cheaper than renting time on a botnet. I'm intruiged as to the ramifications on the distributed computing black market as it were, whether it will force their prices down in this age of cheap computing (especially as none of the resources used are theirs per say) or they'll raise them as a charge for the anonymity Amazon and Google would never provide.
Would be cool to see Sony and Amazon sue the hell out of each other. A bit like two rapists/murderers buttfucking and then disemboweling each other. Unfortunately such huge corporations always reach some sort of agreement in these cases - smart thieves don't steal from each other. A shame, because watching them fighting it out, maybe sending their security teams to do battle in their rival's offices, while we laugh on the faces of grieving widows and throw dog feces at weeping orphans would be AWESOME.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
BOOM... so much for "cloud computing" (I first heard the term back in the early to mid 1990's, and figured it was bullshit then, just like it's turning up to be now).
internet was used ? no !?!?
Shame the hackers weren't Amazon Prime members - then they could have had everything they wanted in 2 days at no extra charge.
stealing a few AWS accounts is cheaper than either of the options you mentioned.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
we called that blitzkrieg in wwii
---- Booth was a patriot ----
We are dealing with a new group. Amozynous!
If a large corporation's site like the Sony site could be so easily compromised, how are we supposed to guage the level of security of any other site? Another question, if the security of Sony was compromised by using Amazon in some way, doesn't that mean that those who use Amazon are potentially at just as much risk as those who were compromised at Sony? So let's say nono it's a completely different thing, how can you 100% guarantee that? On a more constructive note, how do we eliminate this kind of access in future? My suggestion.... eliminate anonymous internet access permanently.
I work in infosec, and not a week goes by where we don't see an attack of some kind that originates from AWS, with us as the target. It's easy and cheap to setup a fairly powerful and distributed AWS system for this purpose. We're giving serious thought to blocking all incoming AWS traffic due to this.
If they are being rented, they are no longer "Amazon's servers." It's simply a dumb pipe, and the dumber, the better. If they can't find the perp from the (hopefully limited) info given by Amazon's records, tough shit.
In the future the attackers may want to go straight to this new hosting provider : http://www.hostedbacktrack.com/ All the required tools are already installed as they are planning on offering hosted BackTrack Operating Systems.
The hackers didn’t break into the Amazon servers, the person said. Rather, they signed up for the service just as a legitimate company would, using fake information.
And to think that by providing accurate information, I've been doing things wrong all this time.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Because the hack, and Amazons S3 outage occured at about the same time!
Recently, they have financed a pile of drivel, in support of the Cheney-Rumsfeld conspiracy theory on 9/11, and attacking all those critics who know stuff like math, science, engineering, aviation and are retired intelligence professionals and military professionals, as well as former heads of state (i.e., really "flaky" guys as opposed to goatherds like Cheney and Rumsfeld, no doubt?).
Yup, sure wouldn't ever want anyone to investigate the backgrounds of those 64 passengers aboard the four commericial airliners involved that day.
After all, in homicide cases, it is always routine to investigate the background of the victim or victims, as in the majority of cases the murderer knows their victims. And on 9/11/01, the certain group of victims were those passengers with ahead-of-time reservations that day!
not really surprising that it gets used in an attack.
...that they went through Apple to get to Microsoft, to get to Google, to get to Yahoo, to get to Facebook, to get to McDonalds (showing off), to get to Amazon to get to Sony.
It's like the whole internet was pissed off at em.
Who'd have guessed
From TFA:
"The hackers didn’t break into the Amazon servers, the person said. Rather, they signed up for the service just as a legitimate company would, using fake information."
So legitimate companies routinely use fake information?