Oh boy....

[Sigma_Orionis]

Code Spaces goes titsup FOREVER after attacker NUKES its Amazon-hosted data

And it's no joke: straight from the horse's mouth

Code Spaces Status

Code Spaces will not be able to operate beyond this point, the cost of resolving this issue to date and the expected cost of refunding customers who have been left without the service they paid for will put Code Spaces in a irreversible position both financially and in terms of on going credibility.

As such at this point in time we have no alternative but to cease trading and concentrate on supporting our affected customers in exporting any remaining data they have left with us.

All that we can say at this point is how sorry we are to both our customers and to the people who make a living at Code Spaces for the chain of events that lead us here.

In order to get any remaining data exported please email us at support[at]codespaces.com with your account url and we will endeavour to process the request as soon as possible.

On behalf of everyone at Code Spaces, please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this has caused to you, and ask for your understanding during this time! We hope that one day we will be able to and reinstate the service and credibility that Code Spaces once had!

No Virginia, I DON'T think that this happened because "the cloud is bad", IMHO it happened because of incompetent system administration. The point is that one of the most rabid cloud pundits' main selling selling points is that with the Cloud you will never need a DataCenter or a grumpy SysAdmin that is always pissed off (ie. a curmudgeon like ME). You can have ANYONE do the SysAdmin work because with "the power of the cloud" even 14 year olds that learned to code in C# last week or know their way around a smartphone can manage it.

[SciFiFisher]

So, they didn't have a stand-alone back up redundancy that was not directly tied to the Amazon service? How much liability does Amazon have in a case like this? And finally.... why didn't they have a separate back up system?

[Sigma_Orionis]

Dude, this afternoon I got a call from some former customers of ours, their ERP application server gave up the ghost and they (of course) have no backup. Now they want ME to rebuild it.

Of course, the person who called wanted me to do the job on the side.

What does it have to do with your questions? Simple, these idiots have the same kind of thinking that brought that cloud based business to the ground.

[Sigma_Orionis]

One more thing to further illustrate this:

The time required to rebuild the server is about three days (the application is complex to install and requires TONS of patches). The cost quoted by my boss was about 30% more than it cost ME to have my car fixed (Problem with the gearbox and fixing the brakes). The customer never confirmed that they wanted to have the thing fixed (anybody surprised?).

In this article the author whines that Amazon and other Cloud providers destroyed "The Unicorn Factory". Supposedly: Good SysAdmins are like unicorns (everyone wants one, but nobody has ever seen one). And that the proliferation of Cloud Services is going to drive the few good Sysadmins out there out of business.

I disagree. Sure, the cloud pundits still keep on saying that "with the power of the cloud" anyone can manage IT infrastructure. But that's EXACTLY what Management wants to hear. IT Management has been looking out for years for a way to get rid of SysAdmins (deservedly or not).

So, a good SysAdmin is NOT something everyone wants but nobody has seen, It's something everyone wants but is nobody willing to pay for.
And if nobody is willing to pay for it, nobody that is any good is willing to work at it. Therefore, the problem perpetuates itself.

IF "the cloud" is going to drive all good SysAdmins either away from the business or send them all to work for "Cloud Services Providers", it's just what management wanted. Don't see much change from how things were in the 90s with outsourcing.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Apparently Code Spaces wasn't the only one to be hit last month, just the most stupid.

6 Recent Real-Life Cyber Extortion Scams

What happened: Websolr and Bonsai, two search application infrastructure services provided by One More Cloud LLC, were hit late last week by a similar compromise as the one that shut down Code Spaces. The attacker compromised the services' AWS EC2 account and was looking to wreak havoc through that access.

Fallout: Unlike Code Spaces, Websolr and Bonsai were able to locate the compromised API access key quickly and revoke it immediately to prevent long-term compromise and keep a blackmailer from maintaining control over systems. As a result, One More Cloud was able to recover its data over the weekend and completely restore service.