Cloud computing makes headlines every day, but most of them are techy IT headlines. This week, the cloud intersected a top news story, as a new cloud application emerged: hiding from denial of service (DoS) attacks.

WikiLeaks got clobbered with a DoS attack Sunday night, a reaction to the site releasing the contents of previously secret US embassy cables. So, the site started taking advantage of the Amazon Web Services Inc. Elastic Computing Cloud, as explained in The Wall Street Journal Monday.

It's an interesting use of the cloud. Successful DoS attacks "typically force sites off the net unless they have enormous bandwidth at their disposal or highly effective countermeasures," The Guardian noted. "Wikileaks, being small and struggling for funds, is neither. But EC2 allows companies to pay for their usage as it mounts up, rather than upfront."

The diplomatic cables aren't being stored solely on Amazon; they're also mirrored at Octopuce, a French company, The Guardian reports.

WikiLeaks likewise used Amazon in October to host Iraq War Logs.

On the heels of the Supercomputing '10 conference, Derek Harris at GigaOm muses that the future of high-performance computing could be more cloud-based than CPU-based. Amazon Web Services' Cluster Compute Instances is an obvious example, and Microsoft is letting some research groups use the Azure cloud service for free.

Will Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) buy Salesforce.com Inc. ? That's not a real rumor; it's just one of InfoWorld's cloud predictions for 2011. Another one: Virtual computing power will be used for black-hat hacking -- i.e., using "clouds to attack other clouds."

ReadWriteWeb has posted three infographic posters with stats, numbers, and facts about cloud computing. They're made for beginners, as you might discern from the emoticon raindrops.

Elsewhere in the cloud:

• Rangaswami Goes Cloudy
• Ipanema Prepares for the Cloud
• CableLabs Pours Home Security Foundation
• Motorola Plays Host to Microsoft IPTV
• Docomo Links LTE to the Cloud
• Verizon to Manage Mobile Apps
• Vello Heads for the Clouds
• Salesforce.com Hires Ex-BT Guru
• NTT Com Trials Mobile Cloud Service
• Fujitsu Unveils New Private Cloud
• T-Systems Launches IaaS
• NBN Chooses Cisco Combo for Data Centers
• Verecloud Teams With GigaSpaces

And here's Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ), from the recent TelcoTV show, getting cloudy about TV Everywhere services:



— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading