The different kinds of security threats

As we have seen in the previous chapter, when we speak about security, we can mean multiple things. Also, as we have just seen that private and public clouds present different kinds of security issues. We are now going to analyze the various attacks that you can encounter when administering an OpenStack cloud.

Possible attackers

Let's start by identifying the possible attackers we can face. They can be pided in different ways based on their goals; in this case, we will distinguish them as the following:

• Automated attacks/Script kiddies: Automated vulnerability scanning/exploitation.
• Motivated inpiduals: This includes multiple kinds of attackers, such as small-scale industrial espionage, rogue or malicious employees, or disaffected customers. They act alone.
• Highly capable groups: These groups often refer to themselves as Hacktivist and are not typically commercially funded, but can pose a serious threat to service providers and cloud operators. Many groups of hackers have organized themselves lately, such as Lulzsec and Anonymous.
• Organized hackers: These are groups of hackers who are usually highly capable. These groups are financially driven and able to fund in-house to exploit development and target research. Multiple groups fall in this category, from the Russian Business Network to the various organized groups that undertake industrial espionage.
• Intelligence agencies/services: They usually have capabilities greater than any other attacker, because they can bend rules without breaking them and can be authorized to violate rules. Intelligence agencies and other governmental players are comparable to organized hackers, but usually have far more money they can spend on those operations, making them more effective.