For this week’s blog post I found an article named “How
Outbound Spam Affects Cloud Hosting Providers” and decided to share its summary
on my blog.
Traditional spam usually originates from “botnets” of
compromised personal computers. The
emergence of cloud hosting services however provides a powerful and easy to use
new platform for spammers to take advantage of. Clients can rent a given unit
of CPU, hard disk and network resources at an hourly or monthly rate. Spammers
use a stolen credit card to rent some of the provider’s hosting infrastructure.
Then they install spamming software on the cloud machine and starts sending out
spam. The cloud infrastructure is up and running 24/7 compared to compromised
PCs that are usually turned off at night, giving attackers the opportunity to
generate millions of messages a day. Cloud providers also offer static IP
addresses (considered more reliable by email receivers), great bandwidth and a
flexible and easy to use OS.
Sometimes it takes 6-8 weeks for the owner of the stolen credit
card to find out about the fraud and report it to the credit card company and
request a chargeback. According to the article “the chargeback costs the cloud
hosting provider anywhere from $50 to $100 or more. Credit card issuers can
also require a holdback if fraud rates become particularly high; and this
holdback amount can cripple the hosting provider by tying up valuable cash
resources essentially on a permanent basis.”
The conclusion – attackers will always try to abuse any
system vulnerabilities and protecting the cloud environment from spam can be
minimized by implementing a real-time transparent outbound anti-spam filtering
solution. Any delays can cost the cloud provider not only money but also their reputation.
Resources:
How Outbound Spam Affects Cloud Hosting Providers (n.d.). Retrieved from: http://www.mailchannels.com/outbound-spam-filtering/how-outbound-spam-affects-cloud-hosting-providers/
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