Weekly Cloud Info #W13 - 2025

Author

Walid LARABI
March 28, 2025

Hi!

If you have not heard about Nginx nightmare, Alibaba new AI model and Oracle customer data leak, check this newsletter!

Have a great read. ☕

📰 Top picks of the week

Alibaba Launches 'Qwen2.5-Omni-7B' AI Model with Multimodal Capabilities

Alibaba Cloud has introduced its latest AI model, "Qwen2.5-Omni-7B," which can process various inputs like text, images, audio, and video. This multimodal model is efficient enough to run on mobile devices and aims to enhance intelligent voice applications, such as assisting visually impaired users. The model is part of a trend in China towards open-sourcing AI technology, available on Hugging Face and Github. Alibaba Cloud has open-sourced over 200 generative AI models in recent years.

Security Alert: 9.8 CVSS Ingress NGINX Vulnerabilities Affect 43% of Cloud Environments

A major security vulnerability, dubbed IngressNightmare, affects the Ingress NGINX Controller for Kubernetes, with a CVSS score of 9.8. Over 40% of cloud environments are at risk, exposing sensitive data across more than 6,500 clusters. Attackers could gain unauthorized access, risking cluster takeover. Immediate patching and mitigation are strongly recommended.

AWS Enhances Geographic Visibility with New Infrastructure Details and Expands to 12 New Availability Zones

AWS has launched detailed geographic information for its Regions and Availability Zones, aiding customers in meeting regulatory and operational needs. The company now operates 114 Availability Zones across 36 Regions, with plans to add 12 more AZs and four new Regions in New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and the European Sovereign Cloud. This added transparency helps businesses in regulated industries, like finance and gaming, make informed decisions about infrastructure placement. Customers can access this information on the AWS Global Infrastructure page.

AWS Enhances Amazon Bedrock with General Availability of RAG Evaluation Tools

Amazon Bedrock now offers general availability for RAG evaluation, allowing users to assess retrieval-augmented generation applications. The evaluation can be done on both Bedrock Knowledge Bases and custom RAG systems, utilizing various metrics for retrieval and generation quality. New features include support for custom RAG pipelines and additional metrics like citation precision. For more details, users can check the Amazon Bedrock Evaluations page.

Azure Chaos Studio Enhances Resource Management with Automatic Tagging for Private Networking Users

Azure Chaos Studio has introduced a feature that automatically tags resources created during experiments, improving resource management and compliance for private networking users. This update ensures that all resources align with Azure Policy enforcement, enhancing governance and tracking. The feature is specifically available for customers with private networking enabled.

GCP Cloud Storage Launches Hierarchical Namespace to Boost AI/ML Performance

Google Cloud Storage introduces a hierarchical namespace (HNS) feature to enhance AI/ML workloads. This capability allows for optimized data organization, fast folder renames for efficient checkpointing, and improved query handling. As AI/ML practices grow, HNS aims to reduce storage bottlenecks, enabling better use of GPU/TPU resources. The feature is available when creating a storage bucket.

GCP Introduces Protection Summary to Enhance Data Backup Visibility and Security

Google Cloud has launched a new feature called Protection Summary as part of the Backup and DR service. This feature offers a centralized view of backup configurations to help identify gaps in data protection for resources like Compute Engine VMs and Cloud SQL instances. Users can easily discover unprotected resources and configure backups tailored to their needs. Enhanced visibility will improve resilience against data loss threats.

GCP Launches BigQuery Repositories for Git Collaboration in Data Analytics

Google Cloud is introducing BigQuery repositories in Preview, enabling Git-based collaboration within BigQuery Studio. This integration allows data teams to manage SQL queries and other files directly with Git workflows, improving efficiency and teamwork. Users can develop, edit, and publish code using a user-friendly interface. New customers can access $300 in credits for data analytics exploration.

Akamai Launches Cloud Inference for Enhanced AI Performance Globally

Akamai Technologies has launched Akamai Cloud Inference, enabling AI inference closer to users and reducing latency. This new service leverages Akamai's distributed cloud infrastructure, which consists of over 4,100 locations in more than 130 countries. It aims to improve performance in AI applications by utilizing the company's extensive content delivery network for faster data processing. Akamai's unique setup positions it as a competitive player among traditional cloud providers.

Oracle Cloud Security in Question: 6 Million User Data Allegedly Compromised

Oracle denies a breach of its Cloud federated SSO login servers, despite claims from a hacker, 'rose87168', who alleges to have stolen authentication data for 6 million users. The hacker is selling the data and has provided valid samples to multiple companies. They also revealed files containing LDAP data and a list of affected domains, though some appear to be test cases. Oracle's claims of no breach are in direct contrast to these findings.

❤️ You might also like

- Google Takes Android Development Private, Limiting Access via the Android Open Source Project LINK

- OpenAI Adopts Rival Anthropic's Standard for Connecting AI Models to Data LINK

- Microsoft Abandons Data Centre Projects in US and Europe, Sparking Oversupply Fears LINK

- Google Says the New Gemini 2.5 Pro Model Is Its Smartest AI Yet LINK

- OpenAI Brings Native Image Generation to ChatGPT LINK

- Microsoft Introduces Deep Research and Analysis Tools for Copilot LINK

- Qwen2.5-VL-32B: Smarter and Lighter LINK

- DeepSeek-AI/DeepSeek-V3-0324 LINK

- Anthropic's Claude Chatbot Gets Web Search as "The Great Convergence" Continues LINK

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