Hackers could have TAKEN OVER Amazon Web Services
Security researchers have unearthed a flaw in Amazon Web Services that created a possible mechanism for hackers to take over control of cloud-based systems and run administrative tasks.
The flaw, which affected Amazon's EC2 cloud and has already been plugged, could have been abused to start and stop virtual machines or create new images in an EC2 virtual environment, for example. The root cause of the security weakness stemmed from poor cryptographic practices.
A team of researchers from Germany's Ruhr University found that an XML signature-based attack can be used to manipulate SOAP messages in such a way that EC4 authentication systems fail to detect that they have been doctored – and thus action them as authentic. The approach applies a class of security shortcoming, involving the modification of partially signed XML documents, that was first uncovered in 2005 as affecting cloud-based systems, H Security reports.
