Comments on: iCloud breach highlights some hard truths about the consumer cloud

By: Carlos Soares

Carlos Soares — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 18:17:51 +0000

I think most people are missing the point that this was a colossal customer support failure. As such, it could have happened with any application. If Honan’s bank account had been wiped clean in the same way, I bet that there wouldn’t be this much publicity or discussion.

By: IncrediBILL

IncrediBILL — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 19:49:46 +0000

This has nothing to do with the cloud, nice FUD. It’s all about the improper security validation by the iDiots and Apple technical support and how a single email account was the lynchpin in totally unraveling all of his accounts. Even two key authentication is a complete waste of time when some iDiot support person resets your email account password without proper verification and then the whole security thing crumbles like a house of cards.

By: me

me — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 03:38:42 +0000

You don’t need permission. You know that. You just want to spam your worthless blog.

By: Julia Mak

Julia Mak — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 01:30:07 +0000

Hey Derrick! Nice post. You made a great point on the fact that users (who often don’t realize) are giving up control when they adopt consumer cloud solutions like iCloud. For consumers, the tradeoff between total control and convenience is often acceptable. But the same definitely cannot be said for companies. Companies need to maintain control over their own data as well as identities, that’s why support for identity management is critical for enterprise applications. I just shared our approach over here at Oxygen in my own post – The Importance of keeping your identity http://blog.oxygencloud.com/2012/08/06/the-importance-of-keeping-your-identity/

By: Will White

Will White — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 23:08:10 +0000

I’d like to see two key authentication become a standard and a government mandate to make it illegal for mobile phone providers to charge for simple text messages … that would solve many of these problems and make all of our data a LOT more secure.

By: Derrick Harris

Derrick Harris — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:20:38 +0000

Fair point, although it’s not a comment on Wikileaks. From an organization’s perspective, someone inside knowingly doing something unwanted would be malicious.

By: Alan Shaw

Alan Shaw — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 04:36:23 +0000

Good to know that you have enough evidence to characterize Manning as ‘malicious’. Please make it public, as the trial is under way.

By: Rich

Rich — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 04:28:54 +0000

Derrick, if you care about it, you back it up locally, even if it’s email (notice I said if you care about it). Don’t want the hassle? That’s fine until something you really wanted to keep is gone and you can’t get it back. Then you change your attitude.

By: Dan G

Dan G — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 02:42:19 +0000

according to Honan: “They got in via Apple tech support and some clever social engineering that let them bypass security “questions.”

Not so magical at all

By: Derrick Harris

Derrick Harris — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 02:30:34 +0000

I think any sensible person would agree with backing up locally, I’m just not sure how many average consumers actually want that hassle, especially for something like email. Same goes for other security enhancements such as two-factor authentication or encryption.

Also, it’s ironic that we’re now saying “back up locally” instead of “back up in the cloud.” How far we’ve come.