Storming the Cloud: A Look at Denial of Service in the Google App Engine

The past several years have seen many new services spread across the Internet. One of the biggest trends has been social media services such as Facebook and Twitter. Although social media is the major trend, it is not the only one. Cloud computing has made a large impact on the computing industry in recent years. Whether being utilized to provide highly scalable robust environments for applications or just being used as a marketing ploy, one thing is certain: cloud computing has the potential to yet again change the way we interact with computer systems. There is just one major factor separating cloud computing from becoming widely accepted both personally and commercially and that is security. As cloud systems re-innovate ways of request distribution and load balancing, it is important to test these systems against attacks such as the denial of service attack. There is a strong emphasis on researching these attacks since cloud computing is re-inventing the payment systems in which consumers utilize resources. This paper examines the Google App Engine and its resilience to denial of service attacks. Further the paper demonstrates the strain such an attack has on the servers that facilitate the services and finally discuss the preventative measures set in place by Google and how they are only temporary solutions.