A recent incident highlighted the financial risks of unmonitored cloud automation when a DDoS attack caused a cluster to scale to 2,000 instances, resulting in a $120,000 bill within 72 hours. This situation showcased the concept of a 'Denial of Wallet' attack, stressing the need for better cloud financial management practices. Key recommendations included implementing spending caps, budget alerts, infrastructure drift detection, and human-centric alerts to mitigate such risks in the future. Experts noted the necessity of addressing underlying security vulnerabilities, such as deploying Web Application Firewalls.
A startup torches $120K in 72 hours because autoscaling had no ceiling; a DDoS popped up, the cluster spun 2,000 m5.24xlarges, and by the time anyone parsed the Slack noise, the bill looked like a phone number.
Autoscaling is a powerful tool, but without proper guardrails, it's a 'blank check.' Essential preventive measures include capping Auto Scaling Groups and tying budget alerts to account-level shutdowns.
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