Researchers: Cloud-Based Denial Of Service Attacks Looming

Robert Lemos writes on Dark Reading:

DEFCON 2010 -- With the help of the cloud, taking down small and midsize companies' networks is easy, two consultants told attendees here last week.

With a credit card and e-mail address, security consultants David Bryan of Trustwave and Michael Anderson of NetSPI created a handful of virtual server instances on Amazon's EC2 and used a homemade program to attack the network of a client -- a small business that wanted its connectivity tested.

With only three servers -- although they eventually scaled up to 10 -- the consultants took the company off the Internet. The price? Six dollars.

"A threat agent could potentially run extortion schemes against a company by attacking for a couple of hours -- and then telling the company that, if you don't pay me, then I will attack you again," Bryan said.

More here.