AWS Cloud Security Investigation: IAM Identity Compromise

I was reviewing an ECS task role when one IAM permission caught my attention. The application needed access to a specific S3 location. The role had broader permissions than the application actually required. That raised a simple question: If this container is compromised, what can the attacker do with the permissions of the task role? I traced the possible path: Compromised container → Task role → AWS API → Accessible resources That changed the way I looked at the finding. It wasn't simply: The IAM policy is too permissive. The important questions were: What can it access? What can it modify? What data is exposed? What could be disrupted? How large is the blast radius? I then reduced the permissions to what the application actually needed and validated that: The application continued to work. Unnecessary access was denied. The workload could no longer reach resources outside its intended scope. This is why I don't stop at identifying a security misconfiguration. I want to understand the attack path and blast radius, fix the underlying control, and then test the result. A good security finding tells you what's wrong. A good security assessment shows why it matters and proves the fix. #AWS #CloudSecurity #IAM #SecurityEngineering #DevSecOps #CyberSecurity

Attackers just breached JetBrains’ own cloud via an unpatched TeamCity server. The fallout? AWS credentials, source code, and user data—all exposed. Here’s the breakdown: The Problem: - CVE-2026-63077 CVSS 9.8 allows unauthenticated attackers to bypass authentication and execute arbitrary OS commands. - JetBrains failed to patch its own Cadence server api.cadence.jetbrains.com despite the flaw being actively exploited in the wild. - CISA added it to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on August 5, 2026. JetBrains discovered the breach 18 days later. The Agitation: - Threat actors extracted multiple AWS IAM users and associated credentials from a 2024 backup. - They accessed S3 buckets inside JetBrains AWS accounts used by Cadence. - Confirmed exposure includes: • Usernames, real names, email addresses, last-login timestamps, IP addresses • Full Cadence server backup with credentials, configs, artifacts, logs • Source code synchronized from PyCharm projects - Intrusion window: August 8–24, 2026. The Solution: - Revoke and rotate all credentials and secrets tied to Cadence executions immediately. - Treat all executions, inputs, and outputs as potentially untrusted. - Audit AWS accounts, S3 buckets, deployment environments, and package registries for unauthorized access. - Watch for new IAM roles, policies, or permissions changes in cloud environments. - Monitor for unexpected repository clones, commits, or personal access token modifications. The lesson is brutal: even the companies that build developer security tools can miss patching their own infrastructure. How is your team securing your infrastructure against this type of exploitation? Let’s discuss in the comments below. #Cybersecurity #CloudSecurity #DevSecOps

🚨 AWS Security Series | Part 2: Detecting IAM Compromise Before It's Too Late Last week, I was pulled into an incident where an attacker had been inside a client's AWS environment for 11 days before anyone noticed. 11 days. Not because the attacker was highly sophisticated. Not because they used zero-days. Because nobody was watching. 👀 In Part 1, I covered IAM permission abuse. Today, let's talk about how to actually detect suspicious activity before it becomes a headline. Think of your AWS account like a building 🏢: 🔑 You track who has access 📹 You monitor entrances 🚨 You investigate alarms The same principles apply in AWS. 🔍 My Go-To IAM Security Toolkit 🔑 Credential Reports & Access Analyzer Identify stale users, unused keys, missing MFA Detect resources exposed outside your AWS account 🔎 Prowler Benchmark against CIS standards Find risky configurations before attackers do 🔐 Git-Secrets Prevent AWS credentials from being pushed to repositories Stop leaks before they happen AWS keys exposed in repositories remain one of the most common cloud security issues. Git-Secrets acts as a security guard at the door: 🚫 Detects AWS credentials before they're committed 🚫 Blocks sensitive information from being pushed 🚫 Stops exposure before it happens 📹 CloudTrail Your AWS security camera Records every API action for investigations and threat hunting 🚨 GuardDuty + CloudWatch Detect unusual behavior Alert on root logins, suspicious API activity, disabled logging, and access from unexpected regions 💡 One detection I've consistently found valuable: 👉 Console logins without MFA Simple. Effective. Frequently overlooked. 🎯 Biggest Lesson from the SOC The challenge isn't usually the tooling. It's ownership. I've seen critical findings sit untouched for weeks because everyone assumed someone else was watching the alert queue. ✅ Detection tools don't stop attacks. ✅ People who investigate alerts do. Final Thought If an attacker gained access to your AWS account right now... Would your logs tell the full story? 🤔 Or would you be trying to reconstruct the incident from memory? #AWS #CloudSecurity #CyberSecurity #SOC #IncidentResponse #ThreatDetection #IAM #GuardDuty #CloudTrail #AWSecurity #DetectionEngineering #BlueTeam 🚀

Most S3 data breaches don't happen because of a sophisticated exploit. They happen because of a bucket policy someone forgot to lock down. Or an IAM role with far more access than it needs. Here are 5 S3 security controls I treat as non-negotiable: 👇 1️⃣ Defense in depth S3 security shouldn't rely on one control. 🛡️ Block Public Access → prevents unintended public exposure 📜 Bucket Policies → control who and what can access the bucket 👤 IAM Roles/Policies → control what your AWS resources can do Layer them together. If one control is misconfigured, other layers are still protecting your data. 2️⃣ Add explicit Deny guardrails Don't rely only on Allow rules. Use explicit Deny policies for conditions that should never be allowed. For example, deny non-HTTPS requests: "Effect": "Deny", "Condition": {   "Bool": {     "aws:SecureTransport": "false"   } } An explicit Deny overrides conflicting Allows. 3️⃣ Apply least privilege to Lambda Avoid: "Action": "s3:*", "Resource": "*" Instead, restrict Lambda to exactly what it needs: "Action": [   "s3:GetObject",   "s3:PutObject" ], "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::my-app-bucket/uploads/*" Less access = smaller blast radius. 4️⃣ Restrict access through your network For sensitive workloads, you can restrict S3 bucket access to requests coming through a specific VPC endpoint. That adds another guardrail: ❌ Access from anywhere ✅ Access through approved network paths Even valid credentials alone may not be enough to access the bucket. 5️⃣ Encrypt data at rest Enable default encryption so objects are encrypted automatically. For additional key control and auditing, use SSE-KMS with a customer-managed KMS key. What's the S3 misconfiguration you see most often? #AWS #AmazonS3 #CloudSecurity #IAM #CyberSecurity #CloudComputing #AWSSecurity

While nation state activity disrupts critical infrastructure and actively exploited Oracle vulnerabilities threaten enterprise systems, exposed cloud credentials, password vault weaknesses, account takeover flaws, and AI model poisoning continue to widen the attack surface. This week’s InfoSec Digest highlights how attackers are leveraging weak authentication, exposed secrets, unpatched systems, and trusted platforms to gain access and extend their impact across organizations. #LiberalSecurity #InfoSecDigest #CyberSecurityNews #ThreatIntelligence #InfoSecWeekly

External security researchers at Accomplish identified a vulnerability in Cloudflare Containers that could expose residual disk data from previous workloads. We explain how the issue worked, how we investigated it, and the steps we took to remediate it. Cloudflare has fully remediated the vulnerability, and we have no evidence that customer data has been compromised. https://cfl.re/4xSRVjO

We treat DNS like the digital phonebook of the internet—essential, trusted, and rarely questioned by firewalls. But what happens when attackers turn that fundamental trust against us? In my latest article, "The Dark Side of DNS: Weaponizing Recursive Resolvers for Stealth Data Exfiltration," I explore how adversaries leverage standard DNS traffic to bypass perimeter security and siphon sensitive data completely undetected. Have a read: https://lnkd.in/disNXnGV

Unpatched CI servers are the weakest link — JetBrains Cadence data breach shows AWS credentials are harvested from trusted pipelines; treating CI defaults as secure is negligence. What happened — JetBrains confirmed that attackers exploited a recently disclosed CRITICAL vulnerability in TeamCity (CVE-2026-63077) to breach its Cadence environment, extracting sensitive AWS credentials. Why it matters — This incident underscores the importance of patching vulnerabilities in CI/CD tools. JetBrains, while advising users to secure their credentials, failed to protect its own infrastructure. The breach not only impacts JetBrains but also raises questions about the security posture of organizations relying on CI tools. If a trusted vendor can be compromised, what does that mean for our own security practices? Look, the ramifications of this breach could extend beyond JetBrains, affecting countless organizations that use Cadence. Expect a ripple effect as companies scramble to assess their own vulnerabilities. One bold prediction: this incident will trigger a wave of audits across CI/CD environments, as organizations seek to avoid becoming the next headline. Has your team patched this yet? 👉 Follow for daily AI, Cybersecurity & Threat Intelligence insights 🔐 #CyberSecurity #DataBreach #CI/CD #VulnerabilityManagement #CISO

JUST IN: Threat actors successfully breached JetBrains' Cadence cloud development environment by exploiting an unpatched, critical vulnerability in a TeamCity server. During the intrusion, the attackers managed to extract sensitive AWS credentials from an outdated 2024 Cadence server backup, while also gaining unauthorized access to current user data and files stored in S3.  In response to the security breach, JetBrains is strongly advising all affected customers to immediately revoke and rotate any compromised secrets or credentials. Furthermore, users should treat all past and present Cadence execution environments, along with their associated inputs and outputs, as potentially untrusted and compromised.

Having 10,000 "Critical" vulnerabilities in your security dashboard and no idea which ones actually matter? 🚨 Good news: AWS Continuum just launched in preview. Instead of flooding you with alerts, it provides security at machine speed: ✅ Prioritizes findings across your environment by actual business impact ✅ Proves definitively which vulnerabilities are exploitable in your specific env ✅ Drives the fix autonomously through your own CI/CD process AWS Security Agent (now part of AWS Continuum) also adds threat modeling using the STRIDE framework, PR code scanning across major Git platforms, and IDE integrations via Kiro, Claude Code plugin, and MCP. The result: security engineers stop chasing false-positive CVEs and focus on what can actually be breached. LG CNS teams estimated over 50% faster security testing and ~30% lower costs using it in preview. How much time does your team waste chasing false-positive CVEs every week? 👇 #AWS #DevSecOps #CloudSecurity #CyberSecurity #VulnerabilityManagement #PlatformEngineering