The analysts paired up today:
Antonio Piraino (Tier1 Research)
William Fellows (The 451 Group)

My usual disclaimers on live-blogging: doesn’t include everything covered (just what was most interesting to me) and had to paraphrase some answers because I simply cannot type that fast.

Quick definition of Cloud Computing
WF: The cloud is a continuum of grid, virtualization and utility done right. It is about provisioning services instead of servers; flexible computing instead of fixed assets. Done right, the cloud abstracts users from the complexity of grid. Cloud computing is IT as a service. Cloud computing is the Third Way – not entirely in-house or outsourced, but an optimized hybridized version of both. In light of the Goldman Sachs report out resetting IT spending forecast from up 6% to down 1%, don’t underestimate the ability for enterprises to move from capex to opex by buying cloud computing instead of building it themselves.

The 451 Group conducted a survey on cloud computing in March, and then revisited it a month ago. Some interesting results:

• 84% have no plans to develop an internal cloud. 5% had no answer to this question. And for the 10% who did answer – the uses for a private/internal cloud were the same as those for a public cloud.
• Top 6 vendors they look to help them develop an internal cloud: Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, HP, Oracle, VMware

Is it all “upside” when it comes to cloud computing?

WF: Watch out for the Trojan horse, the red flag. What about the software needed to manage all this stuff? Any management software needs to take a holistic approach to solve the problem.

AP: Increased management requirements and capability – this is actually a great story for managed hosters who can hold your hand while getting you up into the cloud. Hosters alleviate the pain points, and this is why we’re going to see continued growth and focus in the managed hosting sector.

WF: I would argue that they’re too expensive. Look at Amazon – 10 cents a hit adds up.

AP: It’s almost impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison between cloud providers. One reason is that they charge differently. I’d say that when you’re talking about the big cloud providers, you are right – that they are expensive over the long-term, but for use in the short-term, they can be optimal.

WF: The cloud is setting big expectations. Can IT deliver? It’s nice to talk about “shared resources for the greater good” but in any organization, you will still run into issues of power and control! Plus it’s still early days for resolution of regulatory issues and compliance around the cloud.

Final Thoughts

AP: Think of the opportunities of using cloud computing resources in the areas of testing and pre-production – short-term use/environment (quick up/quick down), inexpensive, opex not capex. We’re already seeing the cloud fostering much innovation.

WF: “It’s okay to fall in love with the term.” It is real but keep the expectations lower and realistic.

AP: I agree with you. The reality is that the cloud is driving a very fundamental underlying platform change. This is not just a term or something that will fall out of fashion. There’s a real need to build trust in the cloud and leveraging shared resources in this way – so use the cloud computing term cautiously; don’t abuse it and make the cloud seem like IT’s new toy.

Interop NY

• East Coast version of this major networking show. ScienceLogic is the official provider for network monitoring and help desk for InteropNet, the world’s largest temporary network. See us in action in the NOC. Stop by the booth, #1045, to chat, pick up your own deck of EM7 cards, or fill out a survey for a free t-shirt.
• When: Conference runs from Mon 9/15 – Friday 9/19. Expo days are Wed 9/17 – Thurs 9/18.
• Where: The Javits Center, NYC.

VMworld 2008

• The largest virtualization show put on by VMware, the leader in the space. VMworld is only a couple of years old but growing like gangbusters. This year’s show should be an interesting one in light of all the turmoil surrounding VMware and Microsoft’s putsch, oops I meant push, into the space with Hyper-V.
• When: Mon 9/15 is Partner Day. Conference runs from Tues 9/16 – Thurs 9/18
• Where: The Venetian Hotel, Las Vegas.

Hosting Transformation Summit

• Executive-level hosting/service provider show run by The 451 Group (and Tier 1). The analysts at The 451 Group and Tier 1 discuss state of the industry and trends.
• When: Mon 9/15 – Wed 9/17
• Where: The Mirage, Las Vegas

ICE Summit

• Also run by The 451 Group, the ICE (Infrastructure Computing for the Enterprise) Summit will focus on “virtualization in context”. This overlaps the last day of VMworld (personally making my life a little harder).
• When: Thurs 9/18
• Where: The Mirage, Las Vegas

Inc 500 / Inc 5000 Conference & Awards Ceremony

• Since we made it on the list (#350!), we thought we should show the flag at the Inc 500 conference, culminating in an awards gala on Saturday night.
• When: Thurs 9/18 – Sat 9/20
• Where: Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center at the National Harbor (DC)

Stay tuned for live blogging and video from the various events with always lively commentary from the ScienceLogicians.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with XSS Filter, a brief summary is that it is a client-side defense against reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.  It works by recognizing that reflected XSS attacks inject script into the string that the browser sends to the targeted web server.  If the server doesn’t neuter or strip out the injected script, it gets sent back to the browser and executed in the context of the target web page.  Bad things then happen.  At a high level, XSS Filter remembers the string that the browser sent to the server, and looks at the server’s response to see if any of the script was actually in that string.  If it was, then XSS Filter decides that it got there because it was injected by an XSS attack and blocks the script from executing.  The rest of the web page renders as usual.  This is a vastly oversimplified sketch of XSS Filter – for details, see the post by David Ross, inventor of XSS Filter on the Security Vulnerability Research and Defense blog.

So what does XSS Filter have to do with the SDL?  Well, for almost nine years, since XSS was first discovered at Microsoft, we’ve been trying to figure out effective ways to reduce vulnerability to XSS attacks.  Our focus has been on improving the ways that web page developers code their pages, and we’ve developed a lot of tools and techniques for making web content safer from XSS attacks and for detecting XSS vulnerabilities in live pages.  The SDL requires the use of many of these tools and techniques, and we’re sure we’ve prevented a lot of XSS vulnerabilities from being introduced into Microsoft web pages as a result. 

But while we identify (and the SDL requires) measures that allow developers to avoid classes of vulnerabilities, we also look to identify more sweeping solutions that can either 1) eliminate classes of vulnerabilities, 2) reduce their severity, or 3) reduce the likelihood of attacks being successful.  The process usually starts from deep understanding of a class of vulnerabilities and attacks, and then we broaden defenses from there.  In the case of XSS Filter, David’s years of work researching XSS led him to come up with an approach that blocks many of the most common vulnerabilities to reflected attacks found on the web today.  The solution is compatible with existing web pages (doesn’t “break the web”) and thus we were able to enable it by default for users of Internet Explorer 8.  Because it’s a client-side mitigation, it will help protect users from attacks even though the sites they visit may be vulnerable to XSS. 

Our work on buffer overrun defenses follows a somewhat similar pattern – we started by prescribing coding techniques, banning the use of some APIs, and building tools that detect coding constructs that look like buffer overruns.  As we gained a deeper understanding of how buffer overruns can be exploited, we enhanced the /GS compiler flag and added ASLR in a quest to cause classes of exploits to fail even if a buffer overrun remains.  We’re not yet close to eliminating the SDL requirements for use of tools and coding techniques, but the SDL also requires the use of the mitigations to reduce the severity of vulnerabilities that slip past.  Will we ever get to the point where the mitigating technologies are so strong that we can relax the coding requirements?  Maybe not, but we will continue to introduce technologies that reduce the chances of a successful attack.

Similarly, in the case of XSS, even after IE8 ships, the SDL will continue to require the use of safe web site coding practices and tools such as the Anti-XSS library both to protect users of browsers other than IE8 and to provide protection in recognition of the fact that XSS Filter is a mitigation or defense in depth rather than a complete solution.  But we’ll also be keeping our eyes open (and doing active research) in the quest for an even more effective defense – whether client or server side – that eliminates XSS for good.

This post is a little far afield from the normal content of the SDL blog, but I thought it was important to provide a picture of the role of security science and security research in defining SDL requirements and in making major improvements in software security.  You can read more about our work in security science in the Security Vulnerability Research and Defense blog.

I was just reminded of this randomly just by reading this list of new tools released at the Defcon this year. Sounds like a busy conference, with a lot of hackers who love what they do. Good stuff.

It has become more like a global fair than what most people think of conferences; even the badge is highly unique. I say this because there are so many things to do at DEFCON, other than going to talks, that you could spend your whole weekend looking at the “World’s Largest Boar!” so to speak. One of the CTF (Capture the Flag) contest winners this year actually exclaimed that he only made it to 2 talks in 12 years! I am also one of those individuals who barely get a chance to go to talks and now that the speaker pool is so diverse it’s hard to find all of the “stuff” they release.

Read the list and full article here

Corruption, intimidation, robbery, violent assault, forgery, large-scale fraud. No, not the subject of the latest John Grisham novel, but sensational allegations, made public Apr. 4 by Hermitage Capital Management -- until recently the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. In a detailed and damning report, titled Criminal Justice -- Russian-Style, Hermitage alleges the fund's Russian subsidiaries have fallen victim to an elaborate con designed to defraud the fund of hundreds of millions of dollars. 
  
The most sensational part of Hermitage's allegations is that the attempted larceny was carried out with the direct connivance of officials in the Russian police. Hermitage alleges the police seized documents and equipment that were instrumental to the attempted fraud, which involved bogus court cases based on forged documents, the aim of which was to sue Hermitage subsidiaries for hundreds of millions of dollars. "The most shocking thing is not that there are corporate raiders in Russia who attempt to steal your shares," says Jamison Firestone, managing partner of Firestone Duncan, Hermitage's law firm. "The shocking thing is that the police worked hand-in-hand with them, and actually performed the theft of the documents so that the corporate raiders could then do their work."

So the two-pronged scam worked in one area and failed in another. The perpetrators weren’t able to steal the assets from us based on the fake court claims, but they were able to steal $230 million from the Russian government by filing amended tax returns on behalf of our stolen companies. What makes this story even more shocking is that we filed six 255-page criminal complaints with the Russian authorities in December last year, one month before the tax fraud took place, and they did nothing to stop it. Two complaints were sent to the Russian General Prosecutor, two to the Russian State Investigative Committee and two to the Internal Affairs Department of the Interior Ministry. There was enough information to prevent the fraud and indict a number of people behind it if the government had acted. 

Instead of doing anything to save the Russian state from this highly sophisticated and organized looting, two of our complaints were thrown out immediately; two were returned to the same Interior Ministry official we were complaining about (essentially, he was being asked to “investigate himself”); and one was thrown out for “lack of any crime committed.” Only one complaint was taken seriously. It was taken up by the Russian State Investigative Committee in early February, but before it could get any traction, the case was lowered to the South region of the Moscow district of the State Investigative Committee (the lowest level of the Committee) and by June, another senior Interior Ministry official whom we had named in our complaint had joined the “investigation” team (again, to “investigate himself”). To this day there has been no serious response by the Russian authorities to this massive fraud against the Russian state. 

As we described in our April letter, the problem of corporate “raiding” is now so endemic in Russia that President Medvedev speaks about it as one of the biggest problems faced by Russian businesses. In this case, raiders have taken this problem to a new and absurd extreme by “raiding” the Russian state itself and so far getting away with it. Together with HSBC, we will shortly be filing new criminal complaints with the Russian General Prosecutor and Russian State Investigative Committee as well as with many law enforcement authorities outside of Russia. It is hard to predict what will happen next in this unfolding and unbelievable saga, but as always we will keep you updated on any further developments as they arise.

Of course we see individual identity theft on a regular basis (actually as Ross Anderson points out its not really identity theft but poor controls on the bank's parts using SSNs as secrets and so on), but you dont see a major corporation stolen every day.

LAS VEGAS -- Last weekend, more than 9,000 hackers, freaks, feds and geeks gathered for the 16th annual DefCon, the world's largest computer security convention.

Wired.com brought you live coverage of the most newsworthy events at DefCon 16. Here are some photos from the lighter side of the conference.

Left: South Korean hackers compete in the Capture the Flag competition. The goal is to hack into and keep control of targeted servers.

Mr. Sinister and Dragon Cracker battle it out in a round of Guitar Hero -- one of DefCon's newest competitions.

Bringing-your-own-booze supply ensures optimal buzz at DefCon. Shortly after this picture was taken, hotel security escorted this backpack-hacker to his room.

Computer geeks from the National Institute of Standards and Technology set up a network secured with quantum encryption in a conference room at DefCon. The quantum-entangled photons are being used to encrypt a video stream across a line-of-site network.

A compact optical bench and an atomic clock (left) are used to secure a network with quantum encryption.

In the Lock Pick Pavilion, DefCon attendees Dustin, Jennalynn and Kunfoozball practice their lock-picking skills.

DefCon founder and organizer Jeff Moss, aka Dark Tangent, at the conference's closing ceremony Sunday.

A collection of black badges awaits the winners of the various competitions. These badges give their holders lifetime entry to DefCon.

One of DefCon's logos, the smiley-faced skull and crossbones, is welded inside a yellow sphere. The sphere is the primary stage of one of the most difficult competitions at DefCon: The Mystery Challenge.

Unbeknownst to attendees, this laptop is sniffing RFID tags and taking photos of their owners when they pass in front of the detectors. RFID tags are used in everything from building access to some credit cards.

At the closing ceremony, DefCon organizers turn off the lights while the attendees wave their high-tech badges back and forth.

Tomorrow, I set off for Black Hat 2008 in Las Vegas to join colleagues that are already there (see Defend the Flag: Roguery Abounds!, over on the new MSRC Ecostrat blog.)

As always, I am excited to head over to this conference to see if anything new and exciting will be presented and of course, to see and talk to folks that I haven't seen face to face in a while.

In that vein, if you are going to be there and would like to grab a coffee and chat, send me a message - don't be shy.

I'm not going so far as to Twitter my minute to minute activities, but I do expect to give you some updates wrt the briefings as more interesting things happen throughout the week.  See you there!

Regards ~ Jeff