Hackers And Clouds: How Secure Is The Web? : NPR

Hackers And Clouds: How Secure Is The Web? : NPR:

"Protecting The Cloud

Another tech company hackers were watching closely this week was Apple. CEO Steve Jobs announced the iCloud, a new service that will allow Apple users to store all their email, photos, music and documents on one central server.

'By centralizing their data, they've really painted a target on their back,' says David Brumley, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He says Apple's iCloud is actually a bank of servers in a building the size of two football fields in North Carolina.

'From the reports, they have barbed wire around the building, they have guards and you're going to need an ID to get into those buildings,' he says. 'So the physical security is actually pretty good. It would be a lot like getting onto a military installation to actually get into Apple's iCloud data center.'

Though it may be tough to break into the server's headquarters, Mitnick says, breaking in online could be another story.

'I was hired to test this cloud infrastructure in South America. Literally in the 15 minutes that I was on the phone with the CEO of the company and one of the lead technical guys, I was able to get access that only system administrators should get access to,' he says.

Mitnick says there are things everyday Internet users can do to protect their information, like using a VPN client or more secure browsers like Google Chrome, but he adds, 'Anything out there is vulnerable to attack given enough time and resources.'"