Interesting article on password guessing via cloud computing

[David Shaw]

On Nov 4, 2009, at 3:33 PM, Josselin Jacquard wrote:

> Yes but you're supposed to pay to use ressource on a cloud system  
> arn't you ? Is it usable computing for free ?

Of course not.  Where did anyone say it was free?

I said "The nice thing about cloud password guessing is it enables  
people to spin up massive cracking farms without actually having to  
manage the racks and racks of running hardware."  Running hundreds of  
machines is difficult and expensive in terms of the physical plant:  
lots of racks, lots of cooling, lots of electricity, lots of  
management.  Amazon does all that for you (and charges you for it, of  
course).  Given Amazon's size, they can generally do the messy part of  
managing hundreds of machines (especially since they are virtual  
machines) cheaper than you can.

David