Sun Grid rises - only to be attacked

Several "minimal" denial of service (DoS) attacks were launched within the first few hours of Wednesday's launch of the grid's pilot version, said Aisling MacRunnels, senior director of utility computing at Sun Microsystems.

"The problem was resolved quickly," MacRunnels said. "The Sun Grid was not compromised and there was no degradation of service for users inside the Sun Grid."

Hackers attacked a website application that was demonstrating a text-to-speech service. The application was available to anyone visiting the Sun Grid "splash page," she said. Now that application only is available to registered users of the Sun Grid.

The grid offers access to enterprise computer power at a rate of $1 per CPU hour. Users can purchase the time through a credit card.