Enterprise software titan Oracle has agreed to acquire Nimbula — a cloud infrastructure management software startup that was founded by former Amazon Web Services gurus — for an undisclosed amount.

Nimbula dubs itself the “Cloud Operating System company” and lets corporate customers manage their cloud assets (private, public, and hybrid) from one dashboard. It was started by Amazon EC2 veterans Chris Pinkham and Willem van Biljon.

Pinkham spoke at both of CloudBeat events, in 2011 and 2012, where we showcase emerging disruptive cloud technology. VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall interviewed Pinkham two years ago. It was already clear then the executive was ambitious, targeting what he saw as a $4 billion market, and cutting out “middlemen” like VMware, Citrix and EMC.

“Nimbula’s technology helps companies manage infrastructure resources to deliver service, quality, and availability, as well as workloads in private and hybrid cloud environments,” Oracle said in a small announcement. “Nimbula’s product is complementary to Oracle and is expected to be integrated with Oracle’s cloud offerings.”

Oracle expects the Nimbula transaction to close in the first half of 2013. Other details including the price tag on the deal were not disclosed.

Today’s deal adds to the many acquisitions Oracle has sought in the past year. A month ago, Oracle announced its intent to buy networking technology company Acme Packet for $2.1 billion. And in 2012, Oracle announced agreements to purchase 11 companies, including high-profile buys of Taleo, Eloqua, Vitrue, and Skire.

Oracle HQ photo via Flickr

U.S. “intelligence officials” believe Iran could be the force behind a number of attacks on banking institutions in the United States, according to the New York Times. The attacks, which started in September 2012, focus not on stealing money, but on knocking the bank websites offline.

Financial institutions have had reinstate their websites after cyber attacks overload them, knocking them offline. The affected banks include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Capital One, HSBC, and Citigroup.

When VentureBeat reached out to Bank of America, the institution said it had no comment on the suggestion that Iran could be behind the attacks.

But James A. Lewis, the director and senior fellow for the technology and public policy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Times, “There is no doubt within the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks.”

Lewis previous served as an official within the U.S. State Department and the Commerce Department.

The cyber aggression comes in the form of denial of service attacks. These attacks send packets of information at a rate much higher than a server’s ability to process them, overloading the server, and shutting down the website. It’s a fairly common attack since the onset of Anonymous, a group of hackers known for taking political stances and for their propensity to protest using denial of service attacks.

As Forrester analyst John Kindervag notes to the Times, however, the suspected hackers are using more sophisticated methods in their DDoS attacks. Where these attacks are usually launched from individual computers, it seems the attackers have rallied whole cloud networks to send off huge amounts of traffic to the bank servers.

That means Iran, if it is the culprit behind the attacks, could either be building its own private cloud network or somehow stealing less secure, but already established private clouds from other companies. With networks being used to launch the DDoS attacks, that banks are being hit by a substantial force.

Officials also believe the attackers are using a new form of DDoS called encryption denial of service. Since banks process a number of encrypted transactions dealing with the type of data they do, attackers can send hundreds of thousands of encryption requests to overload the servers.

Tactics as complex as these support the idea that the attacks are state sponsored.

A number of groups have come forward to claim the attacks, such as Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters, who say they attacked the banks because of an offensive video. Others such as a cyber criminal known by the handle “vorVzakone,” posted intent to hack the banks in a campaign called “Project Blitzkrieg” on a Russian forum in September. VorVzakone , however, suggested attackers would hit the banks with malware and actually steal information rather than just knock down websites. Still, McAfee gave weight to vorVzakone’s post, saying Project Blitzkrieg is a “credible threat.”

It seems officials think the former group may just be a front for state sponsored attacks out of Iran, which could be retaliating for recent cyber attacks believed to be joint efforts by the U.S. and Israel. The attacks could also be connected to economic sanctions against the country in recent years.

Bank image via Shutterstock