Cloud Credential Leakage
Cloud credential leakage, in the context of cybersecurity, refers to the unintentional or unauthorized exposure of secure access codes—such as usernames, passwords, API keys, security tokens, or cryptographic keys—that grant programmatic or administrative access to an organization’s cloud infrastructure.
Causes of Cloud Credential Leakage
This exposure is a significant vulnerability, particularly in cloud and DevOps environments where network accessibility is increased, and there are numerous access points. Common causes include:
Hardcoding in Source Code: Developers accidentally embed sensitive credentials directly into application source code, configuration files, or deployment scripts. If this code is then committed to a public or poorly secured code repository (like GitHub), automated tools used by threat actors can easily extract the secrets.
Misconfigurations and Cloud Exposure: Credentials can be accidentally exposed due to insecure cloud settings. This includes storing sensitive files containing access keys, tokens, or passwords in unsecured cloud storage buckets (such as publicly accessible S3 buckets) or in public databases.
Malware and Phishing: Threat actors can obtain credentials through sophisticated methods such as phishing (tricking users into revealing login details), infostealer malware (which scrapes credentials stored in browsers or devices), or keyloggers.
Third-Party Data Breaches: Credentials can be exposed when a third-party service or platform used by the organization is breached, and the leaked login pairs are then sold or shared on the dark web.
Consequences of Leakage
Once exposed, credentials are a "silent threat" because attackers can simply log in rather than having to hack their way in, often bypassing traditional perimeter defenses. Consequences are typically severe:
Account Takeover (ATO): An attacker uses compromised credentials to fully impersonate a legitimate user or service account, resulting in unauthorized access to cloud systems.
Data Breach and Exfiltration: Compromised credentials can provide immediate access to cloud data, enabling the theft of sensitive personal data (PII), financial records, or proprietary information, often resulting in significant economic losses and regulatory fines.
Lateral Movement and Privilege Escalation: An attacker may use a low-privilege set of leaked credentials as a foothold, then move laterally through the cloud network to escalate their privileges, increasing the scope of the breach.
Ransomware and Financial Fraud: Leaked access can be sold to ransomware groups or directly used to execute fraudulent transactions and disrupt business continuity.
Effective mitigation requires continuous monitoring for leaked credentials across all external assets and the enforcement of practices such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), the Principle of Least Privilege, and the use of dedicated secrets management tools.
Cloud credential leakage is a primary risk that ThreatNG is designed to mitigate by acting as an external, agentless reconnaissance engine. It specializes in finding exposed secrets exactly where an attacker would look: in public code, cloud configurations, and dark web dumps.
ThreatNG's Role in Preventing Cloud Credential Leakage
External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG performs purely external unauthenticated discovery to identify the organization's entire external attack surface. This agentless method is perfect for finding publicly exposed cloud credentials without needing internal access. Through Continuous Monitoring, ThreatNG ensures that a key committed to a public repository or exposed in a cloud bucket for even a short period is immediately flagged, minimizing the window of exposure before an attacker can use it.
External Assessment and Examples
The discovery of leaked cloud credentials directly impacts several of ThreatNG’s Security Ratings:
Non-Human Identity (NHI) Exposure Security Rating: This metric quantifies vulnerability from high-privilege machine identities, including leaked API keys, service accounts, and system credentials. The discovery of any leaked cloud credentials directly raises this risk rating.
Example: ThreatNG discovers a publicly readable configuration file containing an AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key on a test environment. This finding immediately contributes to the NHI Exposure Security Rating because these keys grant high-privilege programmatic access to the organization's cloud infrastructure.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This rating is derived from uncovering external digital risks across Cloud Exposure (specifically exposed open cloud buckets) and Compromised Credentials.
Example: If a service account credential is found to be compromised and associated with an exposed cloud bucket, it contributes to a high Data Leak Susceptibility rating, indicating the organization's data is at immediate risk.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This rating includes Cloud Exposure and Sensitive Code Discovery and Exposure (code secret exposure). Exposed cloud credentials are the definitive "code secret exposure" risk.
Investigation Modules and Examples
The following modules actively hunt for leaked cloud credentials and the assets containing them:
Sensitive Code Exposure: The Code Repository Exposure submodule is the primary tool for this risk. It discovers exposed public code repositories and explicitly looks for Cloud Credentials such as AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key, AWS Session Token, Google Cloud Platform OAuth, and Azure service configuration schema files.
Example: ThreatNG detects a public GitHub repository containing a deployment script that includes plaintext AWS Access Key ID, providing the exact location and the credential itself.
Mobile Application Discovery: This module scans mobile apps for hardcoded credentials, including Access Credentials like Amazon AWS Access Key ID, AWS API Key, and Google Cloud Platform OAuth, which are often used to allow the app to communicate with cloud-based APIs.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This module identifies open, exposed cloud buckets on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. While the bucket itself is the "cloud exposure," the risk often includes files within it that contain exposed credentials.
Dark Web Presence: This module checks for Associated Compromised Credentials related to the organization. This confirms if a credential (which might grant cloud access) is already being traded or used by threat actors.
Intelligence Repositories and Complementary Solutions
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache):
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): This repository provides the crucial context to confirm whether any discovered cloud credentials have already been exposed in a breach, thereby escalating their severity and urgency for remediation.
Complementary Solutions:
Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) Systems: When ThreatNG discovers a leaked AWS Access Key ID in a public repository, the finding can be automatically sent to the IAM system. The IAM system can then use this external, high-certainty intelligence to immediately revoke or disable the associated user or service account key, effectively closing the exploitation path.
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: A Sensitive Code Exposure alert from ThreatNG, especially when it involves a critical secret such as a Google Cloud Platform OAuth token, can trigger a SOAR playbook. The SOAR platform can automatically use the finding to open an incident ticket, quarantine the exposed file in the repository (if possible), and notify the relevant DevOps team via an integrated messaging system.
Secrets Management Solutions: The detailed, categorized list of exposed secrets from ThreatNG's Sensitive Code Exposure module can be imported into a Secrets Management Solution (like HashiCorp Vault). The solution can then use this list to conduct an internal audit, ensuring that all valid organizational keys are securely stored in the vault and regularly rotated, preventing future hardcoding errors.
