Produced by Radar Finance Hongtu Text | Editor by Mo Enmeng | Deep Sea Alibaba Cloud Disk, which was advertised as "safe", "overturned" due to bugs in privacy and security. On September 14, several users reported that when they created a picture-type folder on Alibaba Cloud

Produced by Hongtu of Radar Finance | Edited by Mo Enmeng | Deep Sea

Alibaba Cloud Disk, which is advertised as "safe", has "overturned" because of bugs in privacy and security.

html On September 14, multiple users reported that they could see other users’ private photos by creating a picture-type folder on Alibaba Cloud Disk. Some netizens lamented that they did not expect that a seemingly low-level product failure would actually appear on Alibaba's star product Alibaba Cloud Disk.

Looking back on the past, this is not the first time that Alibaba Cloud Disk has "gone wrong". According to incomplete statistics from Radar Finance, last year alone, Alibaba Cloud Disk failed to function properly twice. Alibaba Cloud, the company behind Alibaba Cloud Disk, has experienced many major failures in the more than ten years since its establishment.

Among them, the one with greater impact includes the partial service failure of Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong region in December 2022. Ten days after this incident, the president of Alibaba Cloud was changed from Zhang Jianfeng to Zhang Yong. Many outsiders speculate that this personnel change in Alibaba Cloud may be related to the aforementioned incident.

Although Alibaba Cloud has been at the top of the list of China's big data platform public cloud service market released by IDC for many consecutive years, the recent second quarter financial report released by Alibaba revealed the challenges faced by the development of Cloud Intelligence Group.

Judging from the revenue structure of Alibaba’s second quarter report, Cloud Intelligence Group’s contribution to the group’s total revenue has declined compared with last year. Its revenue share ranking among Alibaba’s six major business groups has increased from second place in the same period last year. Dropped to fourth place. At the same time, the revenue growth rate of Cloud Intelligence Group is not outstanding among various business groups.

Alibaba Cloud Disk bug revealed private photos of strangers

On the last working day before the Mid-Autumn Festival, some staff of Alibaba Cloud Disk may have a "fearful" life.

On the evening of September 14, many netizens posted on social platforms that there was a bug in Alibaba Cloud Disk that worried about privacy leaks. These users claimed that they could accidentally access other users' private photo collections by simply creating a new folder in their Alibaba Cloud disk and selecting pictures when categorizing.

This bug in Alibaba Cloud Disk was discovered by users and shared on social platforms, triggering heated discussions among many netizens. Some netizens joked, "Alibaba Cloud Disk: Withdrawn from a Mid-Autumn Festival holiday..." Compared with the previous joke, more netizens expressed their concerns. Some netizens called this a "catastrophic" bug in Alibaba Cloud Disk, and some Netizens shouted, "Don't be too outrageous!" Some netizens said, "I won't dare to use it again in the future."

Regarding this product accident, the staff of Alibaba Cloud Disk responded that "we have received feedback from other users on this type of problem and have reported it to the relevant departments." As for the cause of the bug and the range of affected users, the staff said that it is temporarily Not sure.

In the follow-up, Alibaba Cloud Disk customer service stated that the above-mentioned problems had been verified and dealt with as soon as possible and had been repaired in time on the same day. As for whether users whose private photos have been leaked will receive corresponding compensation, customer service said that feedback needs to be handled by a dedicated person.

Radar Finance found that this incident was not the first time Alibaba Cloud Disk suffered a technical failure. On the evening of February 3, 2023, due to a system failure, Alibaba Cloud Disk was temporarily unable to be used normally. Subsequently, Alibaba stated that the fault had been repaired at 23:50 that night and would not affect user data and subsequent use.

On July 22 of the same year, due to system jitters, Alibaba Cloud disk became inaccessible again. The app, web page, PC client, and TV client were all unable to load content. About 20 minutes later, Ali fixed the fault.

Radar Finance learned that Alibaba Cloud Disk is a network disk product created by Alibaba’s global technical team. As an intelligent cloud storage product created by the Alibaba Cloud team, Alibaba Cloud Disk can provide secure storage backup and smart photo album services for c-end users.

In October 2020, Alibaba Cloud Disk started internal testing. In March of the following year, Alibaba Cloud Disk officially launched public testing. After the Youku Cloud Photo Album service was shut down in 2022, Alibaba Cloud Disk took over some of its users and files. In 2023, DingTalk announced that it would shut down DingTalk's private file storage service and adjust it to be provided by Alibaba Cloud Disk.

It is worth mentioning that in the introduction on the official website, Alibaba Cloud Disk lists fast speed, non-disturbing, safe enough, and easy sharing as its product highlights. Alibaba Cloud Disk also mentioned that the product is backed by Alibaba Cloud storage technology and data security is guaranteed. Through various powerful backup capabilities and unique data encryption technology, users' files can be safely stored in the cloud disk.

Some network security workers believe that the Alibaba Cloud Disk failure directly touched users' sensitivity to privacy protection and data security. This is not only an insurmountable red line for cloud service providers, but also the cornerstone of maintaining user trust. Users' choice of cloud storage is essentially a high degree of trust in the service provider's technical strength and privacy protection commitment. Once a data leak or privacy violation occurs, it may lead to a significant decrease in user trust and may even trigger large-scale user churn.

has experienced multiple failures

Although it is backed by Alibaba, an Internet giant, and enjoys strong technical support and resource background, Alibaba Cloud Disk is not the only Alibaba Cloud product that has experienced major technical failures. In the past development process, Alibaba Cloud has experienced many failures.

turned the time back to June 2018. At that time, Alibaba Cloud's official website suddenly encountered a large-scale abnormal access problem, and the image service and user login functions were blocked. In this regard, Alibaba Cloud officially explained: "We made an operational error in operation and maintenance, which caused some customers to have problems accessing the Alibaba Cloud official website console and using some product functions."

In March 2019, another netizen posted on Weibo It was reported that Alibaba Cloud was suspected of experiencing an outage, and this failure affected many Internet companies in North China. In response, Alibaba Cloud responded that some ecs servers and other instances in availability zone c of the North China 2 region experienced io hang (the disk of the cloud server was unresponsive), and they gradually recovered after emergency investigation and processing. For this failure, Alibaba Cloud will handle the compensation matter as soon as possible according to the SLA agreement (service contract).

Time passed to December 2022, and Alibaba Cloud once again "went astray." Because some services in Alibaba Cloud's Hong Kong region failed, many services hosted in the region were inaccessible. According to media reports, the failure lasted from about 8 a.m. to about 10 p.m. before it was finally restored. The entire failure lasted for more than ten hours.

Subsequently, Alibaba Cloud issued an announcement stating that after investigation, the Alibaba Cloud Hong Kong region failure was confirmed to be caused by a failure of the Hong Kong pccw computer room refrigeration equipment, affecting the cloud server ecs, cloud database, and storage products (object storage, table storage) in availability zone c in the Hong Kong region. etc.), cloud network products (global acceleration, NAT gateway, VPN gateway, etc.) and other cloud products are used.

When reviewing this incident, Alibaba said bluntly, "This Hong Kong region availability zone c service interruption incident has had a major impact on many customers' businesses. It is also the longest large-scale failure in Alibaba Cloud's operation for more than ten years." "

It is worth mentioning that about 10 days after the aforementioned failure occurred, Alibaba Cloud made a major personnel adjustment.Zhang Jianfeng, who had previously served as the president of Alibaba Cloud, was no longer in charge of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, and was instead led by Zhang Yong, then chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Alibaba Group. This change has caused widespread speculation in the industry. Many analysts believe that this move may be related to some service failures in Alibaba Cloud's Hong Kong region.

At that time, Zhang Yong said in his first internal letter issued as president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, "Our millions of customers include startups, large enterprises, government agencies and public service departments. Our business type determines We must treat our customers’ trust as our life. Once trust is lost, customers can leave us at any time.”

According to Zhang Yong, Alibaba Cloud was recognized as No. 1 in Asia and No. 3 in the world in the market. Zhang Yong also stated in the letter that the probability of any failure happening to Alibaba is one in ten thousand or one in a million, but once it happens to every customer, it is 100%.

Zhang Yong has not been in the position of president for more than a year, and Alibaba Cloud has ushered in a new helmsman. In September last year, Zhang Yong resigned as chairman and CEO of Cloud Intelligence Group and handed the baton to the group's new CEO Wu Yongming. This change marked that Alibaba Cloud has once again entered a new stage.

However, on the second night after the Double 11 promotion last year, Alibaba Cloud once again had a "rollover" accident. According to actual measurements by netizens, the scope of this failure covers Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Cloud Disk, Taobao, Tmall, Xianyu, Ele.me, DingTalk and other Alibaba applications.

It is reported that the crash situations of these applications are different. Some applications cannot log in, some application pages are blank, and some applications display 404. Subsequently, many topics including "Alibaba's entire product range collapsed", "Taobao collapsed again", "Xianyu collapsed", "DingTalk collapsed", "Alibaba Cloud collapsed", etc. became hot searches.

According to a follow-up announcement from Alibaba Cloud, starting from 17:44 on November 12, 2023, Beijing time, Alibaba Cloud monitoring discovered that cloud product console access and API calls were abnormal, and Alibaba Cloud engineers were urgently involved in the investigation. By 21:11 that day, all affected cloud products had been restored. Based on this calculation, the entire fault lasted for nearly three and a half hours.

In fact, Alibaba Cloud’s failure not only affected domestic users, but also affected international users in some overseas regions. According to the official website of Alibaba Cloud, the areas affected by the failure on November 12 were not only limited to China, but also affected many overseas regions such as the United Kingdom, South Korea, and Japan.

Less than a month after the aforementioned failure occurred, Alibaba Cloud once again encountered challenges. On the 27th of the same month, access to the cloud database console of Alibaba Cloud in some regions was abnormal. Starting from 09:16 that day, Alibaba Cloud monitoring discovered that the console and openapi access of database products in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Hong Kong, and the East and West US regions were abnormal. After emergency treatment by engineers, the abnormal access problem was restored at 10:58 that day.

"The greater the ability, the greater the responsibility"

As an important part of Alibaba, Alibaba Cloud has gone through 15 years. In September 2009, Alibaba Cloud was officially launched at the 10th anniversary celebration held by Alibaba Group.

It is reported that Alibaba Cloud will focus on research and development in the field of cloud computing. Its goal is to create the first platform for Internet data sharing and become an advanced data-centered cloud computing service company.

According to the financial report released by Alibaba not long ago, Cloud Intelligence Group has an eye-catching performance in the business territory of Alibaba Group. In the second quarter of this year, Alibaba recorded a total revenue of 243.236 billion yuan, a 4% increase compared with the same period last year. Among them, Cloud Intelligence Group achieved revenue of 26.549 billion yuan for Alibaba, an increase of 6% compared with the same period last year.

Cloud Intelligence Group’s revenue growth was mainly driven by the double-digit growth in revenue from public cloud products, including AI-related products, and was partly driven by Alibaba’s gradual reduction of project-based contract revenue with lower profit margins and focus on high-quality revenue This was offset by a decrease in non-public cloud revenue.

However, judging from its contribution to the company's total revenue, Cloud Intelligence Group's performance in the second quarter of this year declined compared with the same period last year. In the second quarter of last year, the revenue of Cloud Intelligence Group was second only to Taotian Group among Alibaba's six major business groups. However, in the second quarter of this year, its ranking fell to fourth place, although it surpassed the local life group and the large entertainment group. , but was overtaken by Alibaba Cloud International Digital Business Group and Cainiao Group.

The revenue growth rate of Cloud Intelligence Group this quarter is also relatively lagging behind Alibaba’s various business groups. In the second quarter of this year, the revenue of Alibaba Cloud International Digital Business Group, Cainiao Group, and Local Lifestyle Group achieved growth of 32%, 16%, and 12% respectively, all leading the 6% revenue growth of Cloud Intelligence Group.

While Alibaba’s revenue has achieved overall growth, its net profit indicators have failed to maintain the same growth trend. In the second quarter, Alibaba recorded a net profit of 24.022 billion yuan, a decrease of 27% from the same period last year. This was mainly due to the decline in operating profits and the increase in investment impairments, as well as changes in the market value of some of the equity investments held by it. offset.

Judging from the adjusted ebita of each division, Cloud Intelligence Group is currently second only to Taotian Group among Alibaba's six major business groups. In the second quarter of this year, Cloud Intelligence Group's adjusted EBIT was 2.337 billion yuan, an increase of 155% from 916 million yuan in the same period of 2023. This was mainly due to the company's focus on public cloud adoption, which led to product structure improvements and operational efficiency. This was due to improvements, partially offset by increased investment in customers and technology.

In the second quarter, Alibaba’s net cash flow from operating activities was 33.636 billion yuan, a decrease of 26% from 45.306 billion yuan in the same period in 2023. Alibaba's free cash flow (a non-GAAP financial liquidity indicator) fell 56% year-on-year to 17.372 billion yuan.

In this regard, Alibaba explained that "the year-on-year decrease in free cash flow mainly reflects its increase in expenditures related to investment in Alibaba Cloud infrastructure and other working capital changes caused by factors such as our plan to reduce direct operations."

In the second quarter report released this time, Alibaba also announced some new progress made by Alibaba Cloud recently. For example, Alibaba Cloud has been clearly recognized as China's preferred cloud service provider for AI training and applications. According to the 2024 "magic quadrantTM for data science and machine learning platforms" report recently released by gartner®, Alibaba Cloud is the only cloud service provider from Asia mentioned in the global industry.

According to Alibaba, Tongyi Qianwen’s second-generation open source model has demonstrated significant performance improvements in areas such as reasoning, code generation and mathematics, while enhancing security features and expanding to support 27 languages. The number of paying users using the Alibaba Cloud AI platform (Bailian) increased by more than 200% month-on-month.

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, which came to an end not long ago, Alibaba Cloud also made a strong presence. Alibaba Cloud's technology enabled remote video production and transmission through cloud infrastructure, replacing satellite as the main transmission method for the first time in the history of the Olympics.

According to reports, at this Olympics, two-thirds of the broadcasters used Alibaba Cloud to transmit Olympic live broadcast signals around the world in real time, covering billions of viewers. Alibaba Cloud also supports broadcasters using more than 11,000 hours of video content produced by Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS). In addition, this is the first Olympic Games to use AI extensively, with Alibaba Cloud's AI technology deployed in 14 Olympic venues to achieve instant generation of 360-degree high-fidelity playback.

In fact, the reason why Alibaba Cloud’s previous failures had a wide-ranging impact is related to Alibaba Cloud’s huge business scale. At the 2023 Yunqi Conference held in the second half of last year, Alibaba Group Chairman Tsai Chongxin revealed that 80% of China's technology companies and half of large model companies are running on Alibaba Cloud.

Tsai Chongxin also said, "Since Alibaba Cloud Computing wrote the first line of code in 2009, Alibaba has hoped to make computing a public service like water and electricity, and achieve more developers and enterprises. Alibaba is the world's number one A large Internet company that has moved all of its business to the cloud. "

According to the "China Big Data Platform Market Share, 2023: The Real Arrival of the Era of Digital Intelligence Integration" recently released by the international research institution IDC, China's big data platform will be the largest in 2023. The market size of the data platform public cloud service reached 7.22 billion yuan, of which Alibaba accounted for 40.2% of the market share, ranking first for four consecutive years. Players behind Alibaba Cloud include Amazon Cloud Technology, Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud, etc. .

idc said that Alibaba Cloud has obvious leading advantages in technology and industry practice in the field of big data: on the one hand, Alibaba Cloud is in sync with the world's leading level in the field of big data, and users can quickly introduce the most advanced big data capabilities by using Alibaba Cloud; on the other hand, it It has rich experience in big data project construction in the Internet, retail, finance and other fields, and can help users establish a data foundation for digital transformation.

Some analysts believe that with its large business scale, profound technology accumulation and forward-looking strategic vision, Alibaba Cloud has played an irreplaceable role in promoting the development of China and even the global cloud service industry. In a highly complex and constantly evolving technology field, it is difficult for any company to completely avoid occasional failures and challenges, and Alibaba Cloud is no exception. However, the key lies in how to respond quickly, effectively handle and continuously improve, otherwise failures will only occur again and again. It will continue to consume users' trust, causing some customers to doubt the reliability, stability, and security of Alibaba Cloud, and eventually hand over opportunities to others.