The phrase "cloud computing" is read more frequently every day, not only in specialized publications dedicated to computing, but also appears in newspapers and magazines, and is also present in radio and TV programs, as well as, of course, in the Internet.
But how is this term defined?
Cloud computing is a computer system based on the use of the Internet through remote data centers to manage information services and applications or programs (software), as well as remotely store data.
Cloud computing allows individuals and businesses to manage files and use applications without the need for them to be installed on the hard drives of any computer with Internet access.
This technology offers, in theory, a much more efficient use of resources such as storage, memory, processing and use of bandwidth, by providing only the necessary resources to operate at any given time.
The "cloud" referred to is not the object of study by meteorologists, it is a "symbolic image", a metaphor to refer to the Internet.
Cloud computing means, therefore, moving data in one direction and another from file servers located at IP addresses of the network of networks that can be accessed with high reliability and sufficient data transfer speed.
By using this option, the information is stored in a remote site, which forces you to connect to it every time you need to use that data stored in "the cloud". Without connection you simply cannot work with that mode.
The speed of operation of the communication system then determines the data transfer rate to and from the remote server used by this technology. This is where bandwidth availability comes in once again, as you might expect.
There is no doubt about the danger involved in using this system, since in the first place the stored data is doubly exposed to a whole series of malicious actions, ranging from the theft of information to the introduction of malicious programs to monitor its operation. of computers.
Important information to know about hazards "in the cloud"
For many users of computer systems the existence of many malicious computer programs is still a secret, such as those known as keyboard impulse recorders ... called in English "Keyboard Loggers", whose objective is to record blow by blow when and how each key is pressed, saving that information in a data file secretly opened on the machine itself, and later sending all that data to an email address to be used by cybercriminals.
In another variant, the malicious program saves the data in a file that is accessed remotely without the computer owner noticing that the information is on its way to cyberspace.
With these keyboard impulse recorders associated with storage and communication programs, millions of dollars have been fraudulently obtained through the criminal manipulation of passwords for access to bank accounts, achieving these results, without using the so-called "storage in the cloud".
Presumably using "in the cloud" makes information traveling to and from remote file servers even more vulnerable even when advanced encryption techniques are employed.
Whoever saves the data in the cloud can appropriate it in an instant ... as can anyone who through well-known techniques manages to penetrate those systems, to which must be added the real possibility of a server collapse, which it would leave the remote user facing a disastrous reality, if he has not made local backups on secure media of all the information, or has implemented an intelligent system of dispersion of the information to enable the recovery.
Now a practical example ...
A simple example of cloud computing is the electronic application and document system known as Google Docs / Google Apps. To use it, it is not necessary to install software or have a server, it is enough to have an Internet connection fast and reliable enough to be able to use any of its services.
The server and the management software are located in the cloud (Internet) and of course, in total control by Google and all the spy agencies of the United States government to which Google, like other providers, is obliged to deliver copies of everything stored.
All data is directly managed by the service provider, in this case Google. In this way, it is much simpler for the consumer to enjoy the benefits associated with cloud computing, of course with all the aforementioned risks.
In other words, information technology thus becomes a service technology, which is consumed in the same way that we consume electricity or water in our homes.
Of course, the most recent revelations about the existence of complex totalizing electronic spy programs such as the so-called PRISM, from the National Security Agency; The United States' NSA has shaken the heads of a large number of entities such as governments and companies, as well as individual users.
What was announced by the computer expert Edward Snowden confirmed, and in great detail, how PRISM snoops in the traffic of computer networks, performing automated analysis of connections, as well as pointing, very especially, to everything the movement of information to and from "the cloud".
From the cloud on the Internet to local clouds a step with certain logic
But not everything has been lost, many administrators of medium and large computer networks are taking advantage of the technology that is the subject of this article, giving rise to a nice phrase that I heard a few days ago and that I share with readers ...
"Cloud computing" that is, applying the use of servers in the network itself, without going out at all to surf the Internet.
Giving a good backup to these servers, providing them with data protection through redundancy, and applying “mirror” techniques, there is no doubt that “the little cloud” can be very beneficial to simplify work and play a similar role. to which the so-called “thin clients” perform today.
For unsuspecting users who continue to use "cloud computing" without implementing a long and complex list of protection measures, the supposedly white and almost transparent cloud can become a cumulus nimbus, a black storm cloud capable of collapsing all services, as well as facilitating the theft of vital data for the entity.
To begin with, I think the article is somewhat terrorist and is based on security aspects that have been discussed for a long time about cloud services, both SAAS and IAAS.
Announcing this as a novelty after it has been the way of working since the beginning of computing and networks does not make sense, precisely because of the closed nature of these systems and the logistical difficulty involved in sharing data between various locations in the case of companies. large or multinational, is that IAAS and SAAS services have been widely adopted around the world.
The benefits of cloud computing in terms of costs are indisputable ... In a perfect world, every company would have the possibility of setting up its own data centers and offering access to that information by its employees through its dedicated lines of fiber optics that travel the world to bring data to all its employees and users.
Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world.
There is nothing new here, this topic has been discussed for many years and it depends on the company or user to have enough common sense to know if the information that needs to be stored in the system is so sensitive or not as to make use of cloud services.
The truth is that I do not see any justification in setting up a physical data center (with all the expenses that it implies in acquisition of equipment and maintenance) to store the prices of each of the items in my store, the posts on my blog, the accounting of my company (which in the end must be public), etc.
I doubt very much that a company can acquire the equipment (in terms of quality) that a company like Amazon has in its data centers, or that it can install a load balancing system, data replication, backup systems, database administration data, etc, etc, etc. that can exceed those used by these companies. In fact, the risk of losing your data is higher if you have it stored on your local computer than if you have it stored in the cloud.
This argument simply does not make sense ... How is it possible that anyone even thinks that they can build a more robust and secure system than what companies like Amazon, Rackspace or HP can build?
Cloud servers can be secured in the same way that a physical server can be secured, there are the same tools and even in some cases additional layers of security can be implemented that would cost a fortune if we wanted to do it locally. Obviously if I save my company information on my external hard drive that I carry with me everywhere, it will be much safer (as long as the disk is not stolen, or it falls to the floor, or I am split by lightning in two ), but we are not going to have the advantages in terms of distribution and information management that cloud services or even physical servers that are connected to the Internet offer us in order to distribute the information stored on them.
Honestly, my intention is not to upset anyone with this answer. But honestly, this article seems sloppy, disinformative, and malicious to some extent, because what we should do is look for ways to improve the security and efficiency of these systems (which mostly use Open Source technologies) instead of undertaking a hunt for witches like the ones our friend Richard is used to promoting.
You have your opinion about it and I respect it. In defense of Professor Coro, who has given ample demonstrations of eloquence and objectivity in more than one conference given at The Cuban GNU / Linux Community, I can say that I agree with him on many aspects.
The Cloud has its advantages, but at least I see much more disadvantage for a very simple issue: Privacy. My important data is safe on my HDD, on my Flash memory, on my External HDD, on CDROM, on DVD, which I have under my care and protection. Sure, if they are stolen, if they break, I can do nothing, but having them in the cloud is not safe.
Look what happened not long ago when a Hostgator worker was using multiple servers for personal things. In other words, it could be our server or someone else's.
Having our emails in GMail for example, (because maybe we have no other choice), gives Google the opportunity to see them, copy them, save them, delete them or give them to the Government when they understand it. Isn't it better to download them for our HDD?
And I'm telling you, I'm not saying that the Cloud has its advantages, but it also carries a lot of risk, like everything else.
In my humble perception I think that both are right, on the one hand, Elav comments on how 'insecure' the happy 'cloud' can be and what he says makes sense (Or at least I agree with what he says), But if we think for a moment we realize that literally EVERYTHING is a cloud, that is, from an account in a social network to sites that offer online storage, we already deliver our data to a 'company' (To call it that way ) Therefore, it does not matter if we use a "cloud" or not, since if we have registered somewhere on the internet, we literally already have a "cloud" so that what David mentions is also true, that is, I mean that if we have already registered on a site -facebook for example- registering and owning a storage service does not have to "worry" since we have already delivered our data previously, therefore what David comments on to the "cloud" is also logical (O al m enos I also agree: B) of course that if you do not want to give your data, then simply do not register on a website, but that is something else: B
but basically that's my idea, so I (in my humble reasoning) consider both of them to be right.
Cheers(:
My personal opinion: we are in the p *** XNUMXst century, the concepts of privacy and security are going to the very devil, now I say? And that? It is the world that we lived in and I am glad of it. Now how skilled we are in protecting our data is a skill that we must develop.
That cloud-computing is an advance, well man! Oh by the way, @David Gómez: terrorist article? Fuck ya ...
David Gómes shows great irresponsibility by calling someone a terrorist just for expressing his opinion, which is very valid. That epithet of terrorist does not fit the author since thanks to the computer expert Snowden it was found that data in the cloud is at the mercy of espionage: For a company that produces knowledge, new technologies, patents, etc., that obtains: profits or losses By having your knowledge base in a cloud subject to review by certain entities? .. Now that you personally are not interested in security or try to minimize the real risk of handling data in the cloud, honestly, it is to say the least your position sloppy, disinformative, and malicious. I remember the day in emagister I opened a group to discuss nanotechnology applications in civil engineering, which is my topic ... upon seeing the ideas that were launched, we decided to leave that community and use other means to exchange ideas ... okay, the ideas that We had they were not the panacea, but they were our ideas and we did not want companies to take advantage of them…. the concept of the cloud is revolutionary without a doubt, but as things are today it is a useful technology for the theft of knowledge….
First of all, it is good to pay attention to the spelling and the use of line breaks to improve the legibility of the texts.
When one can read, it is easy to realize that by using the word terrorism in a broader sense (systematic use of terror, to coerce societies or governments) I am not referring to the person but to the object of the article.
In my comment I speak about the importance of taking security measures in accordance with the sensitivity of our information, and I justify the use of local storage when this sensitivity warrants it. However, cloud services encompass much more than DropBox and cloud data storage, which seems to be the only service most of those commenting here know about.
As I have stated many times, a personal experience does not qualify to establish a stigma about a product or service, since not all products or services are designed for all people or situations, so generally bad experiences with these services come from improper use of them.
I am not denying the possibility that our information is compromised in some way when making use of these services, but complaining about this seems to me a completely hypocritical act coming from a person who lives in a country where it is a matter of completely controlling the way of thinking of the population, a country where those who think differently are an enemy who must be silenced, a country where access to information and technology is tied to the whims of the rulers.
Finally, I tell him that I was surprised that a comment like yours had not yet appeared.
Well, I almost agree with you on everything, except this:
Because the article was not written by the Government, it was made by someone whom you do not know how he lives, how he thinks, how he develops and unfolds in his country. Someone who even being a hypocrite as you say, has every right to be because he wants and to issue a criterion or opinion.
Greetings 😉
Sure ... Just like me!
Companion, I think that one or two towns passed with that where you live, because here nobody knows where you live (paradise or hell) or what your reality is, also if you have a way to prove that you have gone where the writer lives and publish it, but I do not think that is the case, so please a little moderation in that regard, now with respect to the cloud in particular I do not like why?
Good to start if you don't have a connection you don't have your information.
Your information is in the hands of others and even worse people you do not know and risks that you cannot control, now it could well be that you save music and repeated things of no importance and if by chance the country where the servers are they feel like it. One other reason you should not have that information, how do you prevent it from disappearing?
And finally, not everywhere the internet connection is cheap, so it is better to even buy a sd or similar.
"Reality always exceeds the fiction". The Cloud is the greatest attempt to put an end to the little privacy that those of us who use computers still enjoy. And not at all that Elav's article seems a bit terrorist. But let's read the news and articles published about it at any latitude.
I had a professor at the faculty who made power point presentations, dossiers and primers and all the necessary material to take the subject at the disposal of the students, all hosted on megaupload and suddenly, from one day to the next ... we know what happened.
Now I wonder. What would happen if the same thing happened to me but with any other service? call it google docs, box, dropbox, etc. Although I do not have the keys or secret codes of the nuclear warheads that I have in the garden of my house stored in the cloud, I always have a backup at hand and the cloud I only use as a virtual Flash memory (pen drive).
Of course, the use that I can give the cloud is not the same as that which a company or other individual can give it. Although I agree to a lesser or greater extent with both points of view (that of elav and that of David Gomez), using a service of this type will always generate mistrust.
Exact U_U
Exactly how I use the «Cloud» 🙂
Own domain and own hosting.
If your hosting company disappears / cancels your account / falls, you simply hire another, upload the backup (you always have to have a local backup) and as the URLs are in your own domain you don't need to modify them.
Problem solved.
Well, I prefer to use the cloud and that's it. I have nothing to hide, and if I had it I would encrypt it and upload it. Why? Because cloud storage has been more reliable than physical storage. In my case, an energy spike simultaneously destroyed 3 discs where I had EVERYTHING a few years ago. I lost a number of family photos that I will never be able to recover. If I had uploaded everything to Google I would not have lost ANYTHING. That the gringo government had seen them? Well, see them! I doubt they care about photos of my family, but I did care a lot.
Since then (since the massive loss I mentioned earlier) I upload all my data to Google. No problem. Stable and reliable. As I am not a criminal or a terrorist, I am not afraid of any government checking my things.
And if I had a company I would upload almost everything there. What would not go up? Maybe some things that would give a competitor an advantage; but just that. The rest in the cloud.
He who does not should not fear it.
While cloud storage is safe in terms of data storage reliability, albeit in privacy, they really are terrible. That is a very powerful reason why we cannot trust ourselves is the encryption of information that many services offer, and the situation is a palpable reality, written in ink in service contracts, which we often accept without further ado, for example , a few days ago speaking in the forum about Dropbox and its services, we found out that although we can use their service with encrypted files, in the event that a judicial request is presented for that content, Dropbox will follow all possible means to give those data without any type of encryption, to those who request it in court.
That is a failure in terms of privacy, and in reality it affects everyone, it is not something that has to do with whether or not you should, it is a simple and quiet right to have PRIVACY, and that is precisely where these services fail . The best thing in the case of companies is to create their own services in the cloud and manage all this internally, and in the personal case, use services that guarantee greater privacy, while on a personal level we also take our own measures.
You are right that not being a suspicious person and having nothing to hide it does not matter that anyone has access to your documents. But turn the point around: being an impeccable person, with a "large" documentary background, someone can take advantage of the "forest" to hide a "treasure."
The best places to hide something are those that are available to anyone, in view of anyone. That is why it seems risky to trust just for the sake of it, even if there is nothing to hide.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions ... and the "cloud" seems like a good example.
Honestly, since the birth of the concept of "cloud computing" we were not few people who said that it was a danger to privacy.
I myself make a joke with the commercials for compresses of a certain brand What do clouds smell like? Lack of privacy.
Not in vain the data of the companies that hire said cloud computing services are not in the aforementioned companies but in third parties. This coupled with the fact that, for example, if a service that depends on another falls, it produces a chain reaction of malfunction. That does not happen with a dedicated server, for example, controlled by the same company that hires it.
By the way, the normal operation of the Internet by servers does not have much to do with "cloud computing." Not in vain this concept is quite recent.
Returning to the issue of privacy. The NSA (US National Security Agency) puts the ballots with "cloud computing" since under the law called FISA a Law for the control -or better said- surveillance of data from foreign countries that they go on the internet. He has the entire 'European cloud' under control and this is not what I say, it was demonstrated in the European Parliament. And more was confirmed with PRISM or X-KEYSCORE among others.
And we are not talking about hiding or not hiding but that privacy and intimacy is a Fundamental Right, indeed, it is one of the most important that exist. And because of that paranoia of the Americans with national security (which by the way in a certain way the copyright considers it as national security) can spy on all skies.
Not surprisingly, the Minister of Justice of Germany, who honestly seems quite hypocritical, when Germany was spying on its users. In any case, he said that what had to be done was that US companies that violate data protection laws (basically those that spy on their users or customers) should be seized. They are prohibited from any commercial activity.
Salu2
I would recommend reading Richard Stallman on this topic.
I already read it, and your point of view seems correct.
Before I used Megaupload and Megavideo to upload the odd file that is not important, since the really important files were stored on CDs, DVDs and USB flash drives. When they closed Megaupload, I looked for ways to make a cyberlocker and thus understand the operation of oud computing until I came across OwnCloud, a free cyberlocker platform that really left me astonished and thus I could understand the file synchronization processor that is made when uploading a file.
Bittorrent is another story, so it is quite close to the essence of cloud computing because of how tangible it is.
In this topic the constants are always:
1. Technical and economic factors.
Clearly the cloud has advantages in both.
2 Privacy.
Here the winner by a landslide is the one who stays away from the cloud.
and 3. (one that I find very interesting and I think is the one that generates the most confusion) The security / integrity of the data.
In the latter, there is no definitive winner, since both are fallible.
So the best thing would be to remember that the key word is: REDUNDANCY.
Comments like:
"I had a RAID disk array and a USB backup but my house was stolen and I lost everything, that's why I'm going to the cloud" or "I had all my data in the cloud but I forgot my password / cerro magaupload / hacked me and They erased everything, that's why I get off the cloud ».
A really safe option requires mirrors of our data in different locations.
With these three points in mind and under the premise that "there is no perfect system, it is best to combine and use the best of each one" It is less complex to find a balance according to our needs.
True Story.
And why not encrypt your own files with GPG and a private key and upload them to a cloud, instead of relying on the encryption algorithms of the cloud itself, which at the same time can be false just to leave us satisfied.
Good idea. I will do that when I upload my encrypted files to Mega.co.nz.
That was what I put before, but since I didn't put it that explicit they didn't understand me. For the next with a spoon like babies.
Yes, certainly that undoubtedly provides a greater layer of security, but even so, algorithms can be compromised, and I will only use AES256 as an example, which could be compromised in 2005 and 2009 using auxiliary channel attacks, and for that only It was necessary to make an injection of code to the program and version of the same that was used to do the encryption initially, and it is not a bluff, the tests here:
http://cr.yp.to/antiforgery/cachetiming-20050414.pdf
http://cs.tau.ac.il/~tromer/papers/cache.pdf
Even GPG recently discovered a security flaw with RSA keys, lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-announce/2013q3/000330.html.
In that sense, I can only say that in security there are many factors that intervene to obtain a good level of it.
And that's why proprietary software product keys based on AES and RSA are easy to crack and thus make keygens (or key generators).
For my part I use Dropbox but only to be able to take the exam notes even on my mobile, but from there to leave an important paper or certificate ...
The truth is, Snowden is a hero in revealing all that crap that the government does with the little privacy that users have ...
Cheers(:
Speaking of PRISM, NSA and Snowden I just heard about this: http://www.genbeta.com/actualidad/lavabit-el-servicio-de-correo-que-snowden-popularizo-cierra-por-presiones-legales?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+genbeta+%28Genbeta%29
A few weeks ago I had created an account there, it is seen that the few services that offer (at least by word of mouth) a bit of privacy have no place on the internet today.
I see comments that confuse cloud with an online hard drive, when it is more than that. It is a set of servers (sometimes anonymous) with a range of functions that are open to users, it can range from a simple disk, gaming, hosting, to scientific calculations (bitcoin). This last case could tell us something more about privacy in the cloud: nobody (or only the owner of bitcoin) knows that it is calculated ... and for now this calculation system has not been violated, and it is thanks to its encryption. The name "cloud" is modern ... but it has been around for many years, before the internet. I used a primitive form of cloud, novell netware many years ago (winNT) ... the pcs did not save any data locally, everything was loaded from servers ... so I entered my file on any pc and opened my files, profiles, etc (they passed several years to know the admin and his servers, he knew us but we did not know him, my privacy ends here). If we are going to talk about privacy, the laws allow the possibility that they put security cameras or know which numbers you called and from which cell added to three antennas to make triangulation (that was spoken by stallman once, I think he said that it was stalin's dream). The Internet does not escape this, since the right to privacy has a certain limit. My legislation foresees habeas data and other things, but if you open a gmail, yahoo, microsoft account, etc., you accept the US legislation (patriotic act) and watch out for the consequences. I don't know, I think I would have to go to live in the mountains in an underground house so as not to be watched or tracked ... this modern world 😛
Virtual hard drives are mostly used more than log syncing. A good example is Konami's E-amusement system, which synchronizes all the scores you make on the arcade machines with the versions that are on the consoles (like Pro Evolution Soccer).
elav with no intention of offending but I think that this article does not fit here in this blog, it is assumed that we are Linux users with a certain level in the field of computer science and the article does not contribute anything new. on the other hand, I think it would only fit if the readers were under 10 years of age to whom we could still talk about "little clouds". These kinds of expressions take away the seriousness of the article. You could have adapted the article to the narrative style of the blog without too much word among other things because if what you put here is a copy-paste of the original article, then you could take the blog seriously, which is detrimental on the part of search engines