The Cloud Bill Is a Trust Boundary
The most alarming number in Friday’s AWS incident was not a charge. It was an estimate: a customer who normally spent $0.19 was shown a projected bill of almost $2.5 billion. Other users reported estimates in the hundreds of thousands, billions, or even $2.5 trillion. AWS said the figures were false, caused by “an issue with unit pricing within the estimated billing computation subsystem”, and told customers not to take action. That reassurance was technically correct. It was also a reminder that the cloud…