Via SlashDot, another reminder of the sheer scale and clout of botnets, all just sitting out there waiting to be rented, no questions asked:

… the biggest legitimate cloud provider is Google, based on Joffe’s information, made up of 500,000 systems, 1 million CPUs and 1,500 gigabits per second (Gbps) of bandwdith. Amazon comes in second with 160,000 systems, 320,000 CPUs and 400 Gbps of bandwidth, while Rackspace offers 65,000 systems, 130,000 CPUs and 300 Gbps.

[…]

… their capacity pales to that of the biggest cloud on the planet, the network of computers controlled by the Conficker computer worm. Conficker controls 6.4 million computer systems in 230 countries at 230 top level domains globally, more than 18 million CPUs and 28 terabits per second of bandwidth…

Who says cloud computing will never scale, eh? Added bonus: some forms of hacking may be illegal, but that won’t necessarily stop the US Secret Service from payrolling you to the tune of $75k a year for your work. Guess I should have spent more time programming my Vic20 than reading novels…