Recently it was announced the sizes of some of the largest know organizations.  I think that you will be completely surprised by the dominance at the end of the list

The Google environment consists of 500,000 systems, 1 Million CPUs and 1,500 gigbits per second (Gps) of bandwidth.

Amazon, second largest, has 160,000 systems, 320,000 CPUs, and 400 Gps of bandwidth.

Rackspace service provider consists of 65,000 systems, 130,000 CPUs, and 300 Gps of bandwidth.

Now for the mamouth of Cloud Computing networks is the Conficker Botnet.  Conficker controls 6.4 Million computer Systems, in 230 countries, with more than 18 million CPUs, and 28 Terabytes per second of bandwidth.

If it is any wonder why security is important, this single emphasis of size should enlighten you to the reality of the threats on the internet.

As always, if you need additional support or assistance in protecting your environment, please contact an experienced Security Professional.

Recently Two ISPs were taken offline by thier upline service providers, thus rendering part of the Zeus Botnet's Command and Control service inoperable.  However even taking 90 of the 250 command and control nodes offlinue did not stop the opreation of the Botnet on the internet.

Imagine if you will that more than 30% of the controls for your Internet business suddenly disappeared.  Would you expect that your business would be able to continue?  If you think that I am admiring the operations that the Hackers employ in developing thier business models, you would be right.

You see that have built redundancy into thier business model like no one else has been able to employ.  Again, 1/3 of thier command and control assets were eliminated, but they planned ahead, and thier operations still continued to operate.  There is a leason that all of us can learn.  Without proper planning, any number of things could wipe out your operations, and leave your business without the necessary support that it needs to continue.

It doesn't matter if your business is on-line or in-house.  Proper Planning will ensure that your business can continue operations, while the missing links are replaced to thier previous operation.  I have posted the rest of the story for the Zeus botnet here on my Company's website.

Some people think that while Australia is about 20 hours away on several airplanes, that what happens in Australia stays in Australia.  Hmm, the last time I checked, there is still only one Internet, and while the Physical connection is measured in miles, the virtual connection is only a few router connections, with a round trip time of about 250 milliseconds.  So the next time that you think that a physical separation is your best bet for security, think again, because with the internet, you are already there, virtually.

Anonymous hackers threaten to shut down Australian Government websites for months

* From: AFP
* February 12, 2010 8:23AM

* Government websites down for second day
* Anonymous hackers 'could attack for months'
* Operation: Titstorm protesting internet filter

A SHADOWY group of cyber-activists who succeeded yesterday in jamming key Australian government websites for a second consecutive day warned they could shut down the sites for months.

The group, Anonymous, blocked the main government website www.australia.gov.au and www.aph.gov.au, the Australian parliament's homepage, for a second day running in protest over controversial plans to filter the internet.

Codenamed "Operation: Titstorm", the hacking campaign involves hundreds of people from around the world and used a technique called Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) to jam web traffic, one of the protesters said.

"It is effectively a lot of computers around the world all trying to access the same sites all at once making so that no one can access them," said the activist, who calls himself Coldblood.

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"I believe that the Government websites will remain down as long as we can keep them down. That could be anywhere from a few hours to a few months at the most," he said.

Coldblood, who would reveal only that he was based in Europe, said the campaign would last "as long as the individuals that make up Anonymous decide that action needs to be taken to protect the freedom of the internet."

Anonymous has previously campaigned against the Church of Scientology and helped get information out of Iran during last year's election unrest.

Coldblood said its members wished to "keep the internet a place that is open and available to everyone without censorship".

"Titstorm" follows the Government's announcement in December that it plans to introduce a sweeping national internet filter blocking access to sites featuring material such as rape, drug use, bestiality and child sex abuse.

The hack attack was named after a rumour that images of women with small breasts would be banned as well. According to Crikey.com.au, this rumour is not true.

Close to 1000 people from across the globe were believed to be involved in the campaign, which Coldblood said "allows us to impact something as large as a government with a handful of people.

"Going through the official channels you just get pushed aside, this way they have to listen," he said.

"I believe it won't completely get the government to remove the filter they are planning on, but as long as something changes - for example the list (of banned sites) being made public - we will have succeeded anyway."

Canberra has condemned the cyber-attacks as irresponsible and not a legitimate form of political protest against the filter, which is opposed by internet groups and the pornography industry.

Search engine Google has said it could block harmless material on areas of legitimate debate such as euthanasia, sexuality and terrorism.

The FBI is pressing ISPs to increase the rentention logs to two years to help combat child pornography.  The FBI has been using surfing logs since 2006.

While I do not condone the breaking of any laws, the use of surfing logs to combat illegal activities is fast encroaching the emlimination of our privacy (for those that are not breaking the laws).

Some of the records that Law Enforcement is seeking do not require indepth monitoring, some of the requesteed records require the use of deep packet inspection in order to deteremine the actual website that was visited.  Quoting a Cnet Source.

What remains unclear are the details of what the FBI is proposing. The possibilities include requiring an Internet provider to log the Internet protocol (IP) address of a Web site visited, or the domain name such as cnet.com, a host name such as news.cnet.com, or the actual URL such as http://reviews.cnet.com/Music/2001-6450_7-0.html.

While the first three categories could be logged without doing deep packet inspection, the fourth category would require it. That could run up against opposition in Congress, which lambasted the concept in a series of hearings in 2008, causing the demise of a company, NebuAd, which pioneered it inside the United States.

The technical challenges also may be formidable. John Seiver, an attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine who represents cable providers, said one of his clients had experience with a law enforcement request that required the logging of outbound URLs.

"Eighteen million hits an hour would have to have been logged," a staggering amount of data to sort through, Seiver said. The purpose of the FBI's request was to identify visitors to two URLs, "to try to find out...who's going to them."

A Justice Department representative said the department does not have an official position on data retention.

While I have always supported the efforts of Law Enforcement, I am also concerned about the loss of provacy we have seen in the country.  The presumption of innocence does not seem to apply if there is going to be wide spread monitoring of everyone's internet activity.

Recently Google in China was the subject of Internet attacks.  It was identified that the source of the attacks was made through the Internet Explorer browser.  This is something that we have advocated people stop using for quite a while.  The insecurity of Microsoft web browsers (aka, IE or Internet Exploder) has been well documented, and reported for quite a while.

Microsoft has reported that while it admits that the Internet Explorer web browser is insecure, that you should continue to use their web browser, because they will eventually fix it.  (Mind you that the following browsers are insecure: IE6, IE7, IE8 and Windows 7).  I liken this to trying to bail out the Titanic with a bucket, as it is going down for the last time.

So, if you really want to protect yourself on-line, I HIGHLY Recommend that you upgrade (or stop using IE), with the FireFox Web Browser, the Google Chrome web browser, or the Apple Safari web browser.

Choosing a different web browser changes the vulnerabilities assosciated witht he web browser you use.  Microsoft's web browser is tightly integrated into the OS, and carries elevated privileges that these other browsers do not have.

This is a simple change, a painless change, a change that is free for you to use.  The question is, will you do it?  I suspect that if you haven't done it yet, that you may not update your browser, but please tell me when you get attacked so that I can say, I told you so later on.

More information on this issue is available on my website, here.