The cloud presents unprecedented opportunities for businesses, but it also creates possibilities for criminal computing.

Cloud computing allows businesses to create a well-managed, consistent and scalable global infrastructure, but the huge accumulation of sensitive data in the cloud makes it a pretty target for cyber criminals.

Once hacked, the cloud can provide the wrongdoers with a world of sensitive information, such as credit card and social security numbers.

Even security experts and law enforcement agencies fear that the nature of the cloud would make it difficult for them to secure the cloud from cyber criminals.

Cyber criminals can make misuse of easy-to-use encryption technology and secret communication channels to make it difficult for security agencies to track their activities. Cloud will also allow criminals to quickly order up and close down computing resources. Thus, security agencies will not be left with clues for forensic analysis.

The cyber criminals who hacked into Sony's PlayStation Network (PSN) last April and stole away thousands of users’ sensitive information, including passwords and credit card numbers, had made use of Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) to crack some of the encryption codes.

Last year, Amazon included GPU-based supercomputing capacity to its cloud offerings, making it simpler for hackers to crack encryption keys. A Germany-based computer security expert, Thomas Roth, estimated that he could use Amazon's supercomputing capacity to crack the type of encryption key that are used to guard most Wi-Fi networks in just six minutes.