Cyber Risks · Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks

Open Source Tool Release: Gaining Novel AWS Access With EBS Direct APIs

Summary: Unit 42 describes how AWS's EBS direct APIs, announced in December 2019, give block-level access to snapshot data that previously required launching an EC2 instance and converting a snapshot to a volume. In Crypsis testing, comparing two snapshots of a modified Ubuntu 20.04 image surfaced hard-coded secrets within nine seconds, with the scan reaching 34MB at most.

Why it matters: An IAM user holding ebs:GetSnapshotBlock can pull snapshot data straight to a local system without launching an instance in the targeted account, so a single compromised credential reaches backup data that was previously gated behind instance-level access.

Read the original at Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks ↗

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