Cloud computing and other ancient ideas

Remember the beginnings of Cloud Computing? No, it's not about Amazon or Google. The founders of those companies needed a pack of diapers a day and a baby-soother when it begun. Think of big mainframes. Back then, in the 70ies, they wanted to offer us text-based terminals via phone line for a fee. They failed. In the nineties, closed-circuit systems took off: AOL, Compuserve, Minitel, BTX. They failed. These days, they want to give us "care-free" e-mail, CRM applications, etc. - for a fee (or in exchange for exposing ourselves to brain-damaging online ads). Guess what: they will fail.

Just like in the world of trade, hypes come and go and every time we hear "this time it is different!". Nothing is really different, because these things are based on human activities, and the nature of a human being has not changed for tens of thousands of years. It won't change this time, either.

Cloud computing will fail for data security reasons. People (mostly open source junkies) are moaning over security holes in Windows. Dear friends, any cloud has many times more security holes than Windows 3.0.1. We are already beginning to see it. Google was hacked by the Chinese hackers. Google has been hacked by an Armenian hacker. Google can be hacked by anybody with enough understanding of Google's infrastructure. There are already numerous failures of the so-called cloud, but we only learn about a small fraction of them.

Unfortunately, we will never learn about most of the cloud hacks because the cloud providers do not need to openly provide patches to their customers–they fix one hole after another quietly in their clouds. In order to protect the sales strategy, cloud providers will keep quiet every time (unless the incident becomes too obvious and publicly known).

It doesn't make it any better, though. While Windows has long been criticized for creating a homogeneous environment that exposes a large number of users to any hack at once, it is nothing compared to the security problems that cloud computing is exposing us to. It is useless to promise "thorough security measures" and "secure data protection" etc. The recent leak of naked pictures from TSA proves the complete uselessness of such claims.

Think of it: if they can hack gazillion-dollar-companies like Google, and top-priority government agencies like the TSA have no control over their data, than you shouldn't give them your data. Do not trust and don't bother to verify.

I am looking to reading more of those funny headlines.