From Leaked AWS Key to Data Exfiltration in 60 Seconds: Are We Ready?
Adan Álvarez
Adan handed a leaked AWS key to Claude Sonnet and Claude Haiku as pentesters and timed the run. 7 of 12 attempts succeeded in ~60 seconds (Sonnet did most of the heavy lifting). Every success followed the same chain: enumerate IAM → pull cross-account creds from a staging S3 bucket → assume a larger role → find a bucket → download an object.
🔎 Key takeaways:
- 7/12 rapid wins show a repeatable, automatable attack path that defenders should expect.
- The experiment reveals concrete detection opportunities: unusual sts:AssumeRole chains, reads from staging buckets using temporary creds, bursts of IAM enumeration, and correlated CloudTrail entries tying those events together.
- Practical defenses hinted at: lock down staging buckets, tighten role trust policies, monitor cross-account S3 reads and assume-role activity.
This was first mentioned in AWS Security Digest Issue #260:
awssecuritydigest.com/past-i…
Read Adan’s full run-down for the timeline, prompts used, and detection signals here:
medium.com/@adan.alvarez/fro…