Welcome to episode 281 of The Cloud Pod, where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin and Ryan are your hosts as we search the clouds for all the latest news and info. This week we’re talking about ECS turning 10 (yes, we were there when it was announced, and yes, we’re old,) some more drama from the CrowdStrike fiasco, lots of updates to GitHub, plus more. Join us!

Titles we almost went with this week:

Github Universe full of ECS containers
Github Universe lives up to the Universal expectations

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Follow Up

01:09 Dr. Matt Woods ended up at PWC as chief innovation officer

YAWN
What exactly does a chief innovation officer at PWC do? Is this like a semi-retirement?

General News

01:44 TSA silent on CrowdStrike’s claim Delta skipped required security update

Delta isn’t backing down with CrowdStrike, and in a court filing said CrowdStrike should be on the hook for the entire $500M in losses, partly because CrowdStrike has admitted that it should have done more testing and staggered deployments to catch bugs.
Delta further alleges that CrowdStrike postured as a certified best-in-class security provider who “never cuts corners,” while secretly designing its software to bypass Microsoft security certifications to make changes at the core of Delta’s computer systems without Delta’s knowledge.
Delta says they would never have agreed to such a dangerous process if it had been disclosed.
In its testimony to Congress, CrowdStrike said that they follow standard protocols, and that they are protecting against threats as they evolve.
CrowdStrike is also accusing Delta of failing to follow laws, including best practices established by the TSA.
According to CrowdStrike, most customers were up within a day of the issue – while Delta took 5 days.
Crowdstrike alleges that Delta’s negligence caused this in following the TSA requirements designed to ensure that no major airline ever experiences prolonged system outages.
CrowdStrike realized Delta failed to follow the requirements when its efforts to help remediate the issue revealed alleged technological shortcomings and failures to follow security best practices, including outdated IT systems, issues in Delta’s AD environment and thousands of compromised passwords.
Delta threatened to sue Microsoft as well as CrowdStrike, but has only named CrowdStrike to date in the lawsuits.

3:48 Ryan – “It’s a tool that needs to evolve very quickly to emerging threats. And while the change that was pushed through shouldn’t have gone through that particular workflow, and that’s a mistake, I do think that that should exist as part of it. Yes, could they have done better with documentation and all that? Of course.”

04:51 Google is a Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Cloud Platform Services

- It’s Magic Quadrant time! But let’s be real – when ISN’T it MQ time.
- The Magic Quadrant is out for Cloud Platforms… and AWS is still top dog.
- BUT Microsoft and Google have moved further to the right than AWS – which is for completeness of vision.
- Oracle also made the leaders quadrant.

- - Strengths
    - Operational excellence
    - Solutions support
    - Robust Developer experience
  - Cautions
    - Complex and inconsistent service interfaces
    - Limited traction for proprietary AI models
    - Fewer Sovereign cloud options

Google

- - Strengths
    - AI Infused IT Modernization
    - Environmental Sustainability
    - Digital Sovereignty
  - Cautions
    - Incomplete understanding of traditional enterprise needs
    - Uneven resilience
    - Distributed cloud inconsistencies

Azure

- Strengths
  - Cross-Microsoft Capabilities
  - Industry Clouds
  - Strategic partnership with OpenAI
- Cautions
  - Ongoing Security Challenges
  - Capacity Shortages
  - Inconsistent Service and Support

07:04 Justin – “…it’s still a shared security model. You still have requirements you have to meet. So you’re not off the hook completely by checking assured workloads for sure.”

08:12 4.2 Tbps of bad packets and a whole lot more: Cloudflare’s Q3 DDoS report

Cloudflare gives us the 19th edition of the CloudFlare DDOS threat report.
The number of DDoS attacks spiked in the third quarter of 2024.
Cloudflare mitigated nearly 6 million DDOS attacks, representing a 49% increase in QoQ and 55% increase YoY.
Out of those 6 million, Cloudflare’s autonomous DDOS defense systems detected and mitigated over 200 hyper-volumetric DDoS attacks exceeding rates of 3 terabits per second (Tbps) and 2 Billion packets per second (Bpps).
The largest attack peaked at 4.2TB and lasted a minute.
The Banking and Financial services industry is subjected to the most DDoS attacks.
China was the country most targeted, and Indonesia was the largest source of attacks.

09:27 Justin – “DDoS is not an IF thing. It’s a WHEN problem for every company.”

AI is Going Great – Or How ML Makes All Its Money

10:12 GitHub Copilot moves beyond OpenAI models to support Claude 3.5, Gemini

281: Happy Birthday, ECS. You’re still so much better than K8 at 10!