Cloud Exposure
Cloud exposure, in the context of cybersecurity, refers to the unintentional or negligent revelation of sensitive data, resources, or configurations within an organization's cloud environment that are accessible from the public internet or by unauthorized parties. It represents a significant portion of the external attack surface because it involves misconfigurations rather than zero-day software vulnerabilities.
Core Concepts of Cloud Exposure
Cloud exposure encompasses risks across Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) environments. The risk stems from the fact that cloud services are designed for easy connectivity, meaning a simple mistake can expose resources globally.
Misconfigured Storage: This is the most common form of cloud exposure, where cloud storage containers (such as Amazon S3 buckets, Azure Blob Storage, or Google Cloud Storage buckets) are configured to allow public read or write access when they should be private. This directly leads to:
Data Leakage: Exposure of confidential files, backups, customer records, or intellectual property.
Data Tampering: With public write access, an attacker could inject malware or malicious content.
Exposed Services and Instances: Cloud exposure occurs when virtual machines (VMs) or serverless functions are deployed with overly permissive network access controls, such as:
Open Ports: Leaving management ports like SSH (port 22) or RDP (port 3389) open to the entire internet can facilitate brute-force attacks and unauthorized access.
Exposed Databases: Placing database instances directly on a public IP address without firewall restrictions.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Flaws: Poor management of cloud identities can lead to exposure:
Leaked Credentials: Access keys, secret keys, or API tokens accidentally embedded in public code repositories or unsecured systems. If these are compromised, an attacker can use them to take over the associated cloud account and access exposed resources.
Overly Permissive Roles: Granting identities (both human and non-human, like service accounts) permissions that exceed their necessary function, allowing an attacker who compromises a low-privilege service to escalate their access across the cloud environment.
Cybersecurity Implications
The consequence of cloud exposure is immediate and severe:
Reconnaissance Advantage: Attackers can gather critical information about the organization's architecture, technologies, and data structures simply by enumerating public cloud assets.
Compliance Failure: Exposure of data, particularly sensitive data like PII or healthcare records, constitutes a breach of regulatory mandates (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA).
Direct Breach: Exposed resources can serve as the initial access vector for a full-scale cloud breach, allowing an adversary to pivot from an exposed storage bucket to the internal network.
A comprehensive cybersecurity strategy must prioritize continuous monitoring and remediation of these misconfigurations to reduce the cloud attack surface.
ThreatNG, as an all-in-one external attack surface management (EASM), digital risk protection, and security ratings solution, provides comprehensive assistance in managing and mitigating Cloud Exposure by examining a target organization's external footprint from the perspective of an unauthenticated attacker.
ThreatNG's Role in Managing Cloud Exposure
External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG performs purely external unauthenticated discovery, meaning it finds cloud assets without needing internal access. This process is key to identifying unsanctioned cloud services and open exposed cloud buckets—the two primary components of cloud exposure. By performing Continuous Monitoring, ThreatNG ensures that newly exposed cloud resources or changes in security posture are immediately flagged, preventing transient misconfigurations from becoming long-term risks.
External Assessment and Examples
ThreatNG assesses cloud exposure risk through several security ratings:
Data Leak Susceptibility: This rating is directly derived from the identification of external digital risks across Cloud Exposure (specifically exposed open cloud buckets), Compromised Credentials, and Externally Identifiable SaaS applications.
Cyber Risk Exposure: This rating includes findings across Cloud Exposure (exposed open cloud buckets) and Sensitive Code Discovery and Exposure (code secret exposure). Exposed cloud buckets are a direct indication of data leakage risk.
Supply Chain & Third-Party Exposure: This rating considers Cloud Exposure (externally identified cloud environments and exposed open cloud buckets) and SaaS Identification (all vendors identified within Cloud and SaaS Exposure). This is vital for finding exposed cloud assets belonging to third-party vendors who use the organization's name or domain.
Non-Human Identity (NHI) Exposure: This critical metric quantifies vulnerability from high-privilege machine identities by continuously assessing vectors such as Sensitive Code Exposure and misconfigured Cloud Exposure.
Example: If an organization's AWS cloud bucket is left publicly readable, ThreatNG classifies it as an Exposed Open Cloud Bucket, which directly contributes to the Data Leak Susceptibility and Cyber Risk Exposure ratings.
Investigation Modules and Examples
Several investigation modules provide the granular detail needed to identify and confirm cloud exposure:
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This module is explicitly focused on discovering Sanctioned Cloud Services, Unsanctioned Cloud Services, Cloud Service Impersonations, and Open Exposed Cloud Buckets across AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. It also identifies specific SaaS implementations (SaaSqwatch) associated with the organization, such as Salesforce, Okta, and Workday.
Example: ThreatNG discovers an unsanctioned deployment of Splunk (SaaSqwatch) associated with the organization, running on a public IP, and then identifies an Open Exposed Cloud Bucket linked to this instance, confirming a direct Cloud Exposure and a Data Leak Susceptibility risk.
Sensitive Code Exposure: The Code Repository Exposure submodule is crucial for finding the keys to the cloud. It discovers public code repositories that contain sensitive digital risks, including Access Credentials such as AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key, Google Cloud API Key, and other Cloud Credentials.
Example: A developer accidentally uploads a file to a public GitHub repository containing an AWS Access Key ID and Secret Access Key. ThreatNG's discovery immediately flags this as Sensitive Code Exposure, which directly contributes to the Non-Human Identity (NHI) Exposure rating.
Subdomain Intelligence: This module uncovers subdomains hosted on AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and other Cloud Platforms. It also checks for Exposed Ports and Private IPs across these subdomains, which can indicate misconfigured cloud services.
Intelligence Repositories and Reporting
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache): The DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials) repository helps link an organization's exposed cloud assets to existing threats. If a service account credential is found in public code, this repository can determine whether that key has appeared on the dark web.
Reporting: ThreatNG provides Security Ratings (A-F) and a Prioritized report (High, Medium, Low). This allows CISOs to quickly understand the severity of their Cloud Exposure risks, allocate resources effectively, and justify security investments.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external view can be enhanced by sharing its findings with other security platforms:
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Tools: ThreatNG identifies cloud exposure from the outside-in (e.g., exposed open buckets). This information can be fed into a CSPM tool that works from the inside out. The CSPM could then use ThreatNG’s external finding to immediately trigger a deep, authenticated, internal scan on that specific AWS account or Azure subscription to understand the blast radius and perform auto-remediation.
Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: When ThreatNG discovers a leaked AWS Secret Access Key, it delivers high-certainty evidence (Legal-Grade Attribution). A SOAR platform could automatically use this finding to trigger an orchestrated response, such as revoking the key in the cloud provider’s IAM console, logging the event in a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) system, and opening a ticket with the development team.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) Systems: ThreatNG can identify exposed Non-Human Identities (NHI), such as service accounts and API keys, that pose a vulnerability. By sharing this list of exposed credentials, the IAM system can automatically force rotation of those keys or temporarily disable the associated service accounts until the exposure (e.g., public code repository) is remediated, thus minimizing the window of risk.
