Abandoned AWS Cloud Storage: A Major Cyberattack Vector

Abandoned cloud storage buckets present a major, but largely overlooked, threat to Internet security, new research has shown. The risks arise when bad actors discover and re-register these neglected digital repositories under their original name, and then use them to deliver malware or carry out other malicious actions against anyone still requesting files from them. The threat is far from theoretical, and the weakness is, in fact, incredibly easy to exploit, researchers from watchTowr discovered recently. The findings came as a follow-up to previous research they conducted last year on risks tied to expired and abandoned Internet domain names. For the latest study, the researchers first searched the Internet for Amazon AWS S3 buckets referenced in deployment code or a software update mechanism. They then checked to see if those mechanisms were pulling down unsigned or unverified executables or code from the S3 buckets. The researchers discovered some 150 S3 buckets that at some time a government organization, Fortune 500 company, technology company, cybersecurity vendor or major open source project had used for software deployment, updates, configurations and similar purposes, and then abandoned. To check what would happen, watchTowr registered the unused buckets using their original names for a total of around $400, and enabled logging on them to see who might request files from each S3 bucket. The company also wanted to find out what these users would request from the stor...