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The Problem of Permissions and Non-Human Identities - Why Remediating Credentials Takes Longer Than You Think

The Problem of Permissions and Non-Human Identities - Why Remediating Credentials Takes Longer Than You Think

Nov 18, 2024 DevOps / Identity Security
According to research from GitGuardian and CyberArk, 79% of IT decision-makers reported having experienced a secrets leak , up from 75% in the previous year's report. At the same time, the number of leaked credentials has never been higher, with over 12.7 million hardcoded credentials in public GitHub repositories alone . One of the more troubling aspects of this report is that over 90% of valid secrets found and reported remained valid for more than 5 days. According to the same research, on average, it takes organizations 27 days to remediate leaked credentials. Combine that with the fact that non-human identities outnumber human identities by at least 45:1 , and it is easy to see why many organizations are realizing stopping secrets sprawl means finding a way to deal with this machine identity crisis. Unfortunately, the research also shows that many teams are confused about who owns the security of these identities. It is a perfect storm of risk.  Why Does Rotation Take So L
Malicious PyPI Package ‘Fabrice’ Found Stealing AWS Keys from Thousands of Developers

Malicious PyPI Package 'Fabrice' Found Stealing AWS Keys from Thousands of Developers

Nov 07, 2024 Vulnerability / Cloud Security
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) that has racked up thousands of downloads for over three years while stealthily exfiltrating developers' Amazon Web Services (AWS) credentials. The package in question is " fabrice ," which typosquats a popular Python library known as " fabric ," which is designed to execute shell commands remotely over SSH.  While the legitimate package has over 202 million downloads, its malicious counterpart has been downloaded more than 37,100 times to date. As of writing, "fabrice" is still available for download from PyPI. It was first published in March 2021. The typosquatting package is designed to exploit the trust associated with "fabric," incorporating "payloads that steal credentials, create backdoors, and execute platform-specific scripts," security firm Socket said . "Fabrice" is designed to carry out its malicious actions
Cyber Story Time: The Boy Who Cried "Secure!"

Cyber Story Time: The Boy Who Cried "Secure!"

Nov 21, 2024Threat Detection / Pentesting
As a relatively new security category, many security operators and executives I've met have asked us "What are these Automated Security Validation (ASV) tools?" We've covered that pretty extensively in the past, so today, instead of covering the " What is ASV?" I wanted to address the " Why ASV?" question. In this article, we'll cover some common use cases and misconceptions of how people misuse and misunderstand ASV tools daily (because that's a lot more fun). To kick things off, there's no place to start like the beginning. Automated security validation tools are designed to provide continuous, real-time assessment of an organization's cybersecurity defenses. These tools are continuous and use exploitation to validate defenses like EDR, NDR, and WAFs. They're more in-depth than vulnerability scanners because they use tactics and techniques that you'll see in manual penetration tests. Vulnerability scanners won't relay hashes or combine vulnerabilities to further attacks, whic
AWS Cloud Development Kit Vulnerability Exposes Users to Potential Account Takeover Risks

AWS Cloud Development Kit Vulnerability Exposes Users to Potential Account Takeover Risks

Oct 24, 2024 Vulnerability / Cloud Security
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a security flaw impacting Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Development Kit (CDK) that could have resulted in an account takeover under specific circumstances. "The impact of this issue could, in certain scenarios, allow an attacker to gain administrative access to a target AWS account, resulting in a full account takeover," Aqua researchers Ofek Itach and Yakir Kadkoda said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Following responsible disclosure on June 27, 2024, the issue was addressed by the project maintainers in CDK version 2.149.0 released in July. AWS CDK is an open-source software development framework for defining cloud application resources using Python, TypeScript, or JavaScript and provisioning them via CloudFormation. The problem identified by Aqua builds upon prior findings from the cloud security firm about shadow resources in AWS, and how predefined naming conventions for AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets
cyber security

Creating, Managing and Securing Non-Human Identities

websitePermisoCybersecurity / Identity Security
A new class of identities has emerged alongside traditional human users: non-human identities (NHIs). Permiso Security's new eBook details everything you need to know about managing and securing non-human identities, and strategies to unify identity security without compromising agility.
New 'ALBeast' Misconfiguration Exposes Weakness in AWS Application Load Balancer

New 'ALBeast' Misconfiguration Exposes Weakness in AWS Application Load Balancer

Aug 22, 2024 Cloud Security / Application Security
As many as 15,000 applications using Amazon Web Services' (AWS) Application Load Balancer (ALB) for authentication are potentially susceptible to a configuration-based issue that could expose them to sidestep access controls and compromise applications. That's according to findings from Israeli cybersecurity company Miggo, which dubbed the problem ALBeast . "This vulnerability allows attackers to directly access affected applications, particularly if they are exposed to the internet," security researcher Liad Eliyahu said . ALB is an Amazon service designed to route HTTP and HTTPS traffic to target applications based on the nature of the requests. It also allows users to "offload the authentication functionality" from their apps into the ALB. "Application Load Balancer will securely authenticate users as they access cloud applications," Amazon notes on its website. "Application Load Balancer is seamlessly integrated with Amazon Cognit
Detecting AWS Account Compromise: Key Indicators in CloudTrail Logs for Stolen API Keys

Detecting AWS Account Compromise: Key Indicators in CloudTrail Logs for Stolen API Keys

Aug 20, 2024 Cybersecurity / Cloud Security
As cloud infrastructure becomes the backbone of modern enterprises, ensuring the security of these environments is paramount. With AWS (Amazon Web Services) still being the dominant cloud it is important for any security professional to know where to look for signs of compromise. AWS CloudTrail stands out as an essential tool for tracking and logging API activity, providing a comprehensive record of actions taken within an AWS account. Think of AWS CloudTrail like an audit or event log for all of the API calls made in your AWS account. For security professionals, monitoring these logs is critical, particularly when it comes to detecting potential unauthorized access, such as through stolen API keys. These techniques and many others I've learned through the incidents I've worked in AWS and that we built into SANS FOR509 , Enterprise Cloud Forensics.  1. Unusual API Calls and Access Patterns A. Sudden Spike in API Requests One of the first signs of a potential security breach is an u
Experts Uncover Severe AWS Flaws Leading to RCE, Data Theft, and Full-Service Takeovers

Experts Uncover Severe AWS Flaws Leading to RCE, Data Theft, and Full-Service Takeovers

Aug 09, 2024 Cloud Security / Data Protection
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered multiple critical flaws in Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings that, if successfully exploited, could result in serious consequences. "The impact of these vulnerabilities range between remote code execution (RCE), full-service user takeover (which might provide powerful administrative access), manipulation of AI modules, exposing sensitive data, data exfiltration, and denial-of-service," cloud security firm Aqua said in a detailed report shared with The Hacker News. Following responsible disclosure in February 2024, Amazon addressed the shortcomings over several months from March to June. The findings were presented at Black Hat USA 2024. Central to the issue, dubbed Bucket Monopoly, is an attack vector referred to as Shadow Resource, which, in this case, refers to the automatic creation of an AWS S3 bucket when using services like CloudFormation, Glue, EMR, SageMaker, ServiceCatalog, and CodeStar. The S3 bucket name created in
TeamTNT's Silentbob Botnet Infecting 196 Hosts in Cloud Attack Campaign

TeamTNT's Silentbob Botnet Infecting 196 Hosts in Cloud Attack Campaign

Jul 13, 2023 Cloud Security / Cryptocurrency
As many as 196 hosts have been infected as part of an aggressive cloud campaign mounted by the TeamTNT group called  Silentbob . "The botnet run by TeamTNT has set its sights on Docker and Kubernetes environments, Redis servers, Postgres databases, Hadoop clusters, Tomcat and Nginx servers, Weave Scope, SSH, and Jupyter applications," Aqua security researchers Ofek Itach and Assaf Morag  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. "The focus this time seems to be more on infecting systems and testing the botnet, rather than deploying cryptominers for profit." The development arrives a week after the cloud security company  detailed  an intrusion set linked to the TeamTNT group that targets exposed JupyterLab and Docker APIs to deploy the Tsunami malware and hijack system resources to run a cryptocurrency miner. The latest findings suggest a broader campaign and the use of a larger attack infrastructure than previously thought, including various shell script
SCARLETEEL Cryptojacking Campaign Exploiting AWS Fargate in Ongoing Campaign

SCARLETEEL Cryptojacking Campaign Exploiting AWS Fargate in Ongoing Campaign

Jul 11, 2023 Cryptocurrency / Cloud Security
Cloud environments continue to be at the receiving end of an ongoing advanced attack campaign dubbed SCARLETEEL, with the threat actors now setting their sights on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Fargate. "Cloud environments are still their primary target, but the tools and techniques used have adapted to bypass new security measures, along with a more resilient and stealthy command and control architecture," Sysdig security researcher Alessandro Brucato said in a new report shared with The Hacker News. SCARLETEEL was  first exposed  by the cybersecurity company in February 2023, detailing a sophisticated attack chain that culminated in the theft of proprietary data from AWS infrastructure and the deployment of cryptocurrency miners to profit off the compromised systems' resources illegally. A follow-up analysis by Cado Security  uncovered  potential links to a prolific cryptojacking group known as  TeamTNT , although Sysdig told The Hacker News that it "could be some
Indonesian Cybercriminals Exploit AWS for Profitable Crypto Mining Operations

Indonesian Cybercriminals Exploit AWS for Profitable Crypto Mining Operations

May 22, 2023 Cryptocurrency / Cloud Security
A financially motivated threat actor of Indonesian origin has been observed leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances to carry out illicit crypto mining operations. Cloud security company's Permiso P0 Labs, which first detected the group in November 2021, has assigned it the moniker  GUI-vil  (pronounced Goo-ee-vil). "The group displays a preference for Graphical User Interface (GUI) tools, specifically S3 Browser (version 9.5.5) for their initial operations," the company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "Upon gaining AWS Console access, they conduct their operations directly through the web browser." Attack chains mounted by GUI-vil entail obtaining initial access by weaponizing AWS keys in publicly exposed source code repositories on GitHub or scanning for GitLab instances that are vulnerable to remote code execution flaws (e.g.,  CVE-2021-22205 ). A successful ingress is followed by privilege escalation and
Researchers Detail AppSync Cross-Tenant Vulnerability in Amazon Web Services

Researchers Detail AppSync Cross-Tenant Vulnerability in Amazon Web Services

Nov 28, 2022
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has resolved a cross-tenant vulnerability in its platform that could be weaponized by an attacker to gain unauthorized access to resources. The issue relates to a  confused deputy problem , a type of privilege escalation where a program that doesn't have permission to perform an action can coerce a more-privileged entity to perform the action. The shortcoming was reported by Datadog to AWS on September 1, 2022, following which a patch was shipped on September 6. "This attack abuses the AppSync service to assume [identity and access management]  roles  in other AWS accounts, which allows an attacker to pivot into a victim organization and access resources in those accounts," Datadog researcher Nick Frichette  said  in a report published last week. In a coordinated disclosure, Amazon  said  that no customers were affected by the vulnerability and that no customer action is required. It described it as a "case-sensitivity parsing issue w
Unpatched Travis CI API Bug Exposes Thousands of Secret User Access Tokens

Unpatched Travis CI API Bug Exposes Thousands of Secret User Access Tokens

Jun 14, 2022
An unpatched security issue in the Travis CI API has left tens of thousands of developers' user tokens exposed to potential attacks, effectively allowing threat actors to breach cloud infrastructures, make unauthorized code changes, and initiate supply chain attacks. "More than 770 million logs of free tier users are available, from which you can easily extract tokens, secrets, and other credentials associated with popular cloud service providers such as GitHub, AWS, and Docker Hub," researchers from cloud security firm Aqua  said  in a Monday report. Travis CI is a  continuous integration  service used to build and test software projects hosted on cloud repository platforms such as GitHub and Bitbucket. The issue, previously reported in 2015 and  2019 , is rooted in the fact that the  API  permits access to historical logs in cleartext format, enabling a malicious party to even "fetch the logs that were previously unavailable via the API." The logs go all
Cross-Regional Disaster Recovery with Elasticsearch

Cross-Regional Disaster Recovery with Elasticsearch

Apr 13, 2022
Unsurprisingly, here at  Rewind , we've got a lot of data to protect (over 2 petabytes worth). One of the databases we use is called Elasticsearch (ES or Opensearch, as it is currently known in AWS). To put it simply, ES is a document database that facilitates lightning-fast search results. Speed is essential when customers are looking for a particular file or item that they need to restore using  Rewind . Every second of downtime counts, so our search results need to be fast, accurate, and reliable. Another consideration was disaster  recovery . As part of our  System and Organization Controls Level 2 (SOC2)  certification process, we needed to ensure we had a working disaster recovery plan to restore service in the unlikely event that the entire AWS region was down. "An entire AWS region?? That will never happen!" (Except for  when it did )  Anything is possible, things go wrong, and in order to meet our SOC2 requirements we needed to have a working solution. Specif
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