OT: web-based applications and security...

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:05:00 -0600, Modulok <modulok at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it just me being paranoid, or is all this 'online' and 'live'  aka
> web-based applications and data storage like... the biggest security
> threat in the Universe?

No. The biggest security threat is the human nature, participating
in operating these facilities.



> Not only from the perspective of the company
> offering said services selling you out, but also in the fact that it
> creates a high-value target (tons of data in one place) for the entire
> world to try and exploit.

Gaining information, especially those that have a certain worth (such
as corporate data), is one important goal of criminals across the whole
Internet. Offering opportunities, given by the fact that such "online
live storage" clients and servers run MICROS~1 software (which is very
well known for its high quality, haha), may turn such data silos into
interesting targets. I'm sure that criminals have already found out about
this fact, they're just waiting for more and more corporate "decision
carriers" to adopt to all these modern techniques: "If we store our
valueable data on those web servers, it will save us backup costs!"
Maybe they're just waiting for some data to arrive where "conventional"
espionage and sabotage would be too complicated. It's always nice when
your victim delivers the loot willingly, isn't it?

In fact, the situation you described isn't quite new. For many years
now, data is stored on servers that are connected to the Internet,
delivering certain services to the users. With the goal of decentralized
computing, processing and working, the "in-house solution" seems to
get less and less important.



> Thoughts?

Yes. :-)



-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...