A Large-scale Analysis of Cloud Service Abuse

Cyber-attackers abuse cloud services as an infrastructure for their attacks. In a cloud service, the assigned Internet Protocol (IP) address for a server is owned by the cloud service provider. When the server is shut down, the assigned IP address is released and then assigned to another server in the same cloud service. Thus, cyber-attackers abusing cloud services pose a risk to legitimate service providers, developers, and end users of potentially being falsely blacklisted, which results in a poorer reputation for the service. In this study, we conducted a large-scale measurement of cloud service abuse using blacklisted IP addresses. Our analysis of four cloud services over 154 days using 39 blacklists revealed that a total of 61, 060 IP addresses from these cloud service providers were blacklisted, approximately 14, 000 IP addresses continue to be blacklisted, and approximately 5% are replaced daily. Moreover, our study revealed trends in attacks that abuse cloud services with respect to attack type, region, duration, and anti-abuse actions. Finally, we discussed recommendations for cloud service users, cloud service providers, and blacklist providers.