Open Cloud Bucket Discovery
Open Cloud Bucket Discovery, in the context of cybersecurity, is the practice of systematically identifying publicly exposed or misconfigured cloud storage repositories belonging to an organization. These repositories, often called "buckets" (as in Amazon Web Services S3) or containers (as in Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform), are intended for data storage but can be inadvertently made accessible to the public internet due to errors in access control configuration.
The goal of this discovery process is to map out an organization's use of cloud storage services and, crucially, to test the permissions applied to those storage locations from an unauthenticated, external perspective—the same way an attacker would probe for weaknesses.
Key Aspects of the Discovery Process:
Enumeration of Cloud Providers: The process begins by identifying the cloud service providers (CSPs) an organization uses, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This can often be inferred from external indicators such as DNS records or technology stack profiling.
Target Identification: The monitoring attempts to identify the unique names associated with an organization's storage buckets. These names often contain the organization's name, brand, or common project keywords.
Permissions Testing: Once a potential bucket name is identified, the discovery process attempts to access the bucket's contents or metadata without authentication. An "open" or "exposed" bucket grants permissions such as List (allowing an attacker to view file names) and Read (allowing an attacker to downloadfiles) to the general public or to "all users."
Data Exposure Risk Assessment: The final stage is to determine the severity of the misconfiguration based on the type of data exposed. Exposed buckets frequently contain highly sensitive information, including source code, proprietary business documents, private keys, backups, customer data, and internal configurations, posing a critical data-leak risk.
Open Cloud Bucket Discovery is a fundamental component of external attack surface management because it focuses on a configuration vulnerability that attackers can easily find and exploit, often leading to massive, immediate data breaches.
ThreatNG is highly effective at mitigating the risk posed by Open Cloud Bucket Discovery because its core capabilities are built around identifying and validating these specific configuration mistakes from an external attacker's perspective.
External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG ensures all organization-related cloud storage is accounted for and continuously watched for configuration changes that could lead to exposure.
External Discovery: ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery to map an organization's entire digital footprint, including identifying its presence across major cloud platforms.
Continuous Monitoring: The platform continuously monitors the external attack surface. This is critical for preventing open cloud buckets, as misconfigurations can be momentary or introduced during updates, making continuous visibility essential to catch the vulnerability the moment it appears.
External Assessment
ThreatNG's assessments specifically check for open cloud storage and quantify the risk of the resulting data leak.
Cloud Exposure Assessment: ThreatNG specifically includes Cloud Exposure findings in multiple security ratings, which is defined as exposed open cloud buckets.
Data Leak Susceptibility Security Rating: This rating is derived from uncovering external digital risks across categories, including Cloud Exposure (specifically exposed open cloud buckets). A low rating (e.g., F) provides a clear, objective metric that an organization is highly susceptible to a data leak because a public cloud bucket was found.
Cyber Risk Exposure Security Rating: This rating also includes Cloud Exposure (exposed open cloud buckets) as a key finding.
Example of Assessment: If a development team accidentally misconfigures a backup process, and a bucket named companyname-backup-2025 on AWS is set to publicly readable, ThreatNG's external assessment will successfully access the bucket's permissions from the outside, confirm it is exposed, and immediately degrade the organization's Data Leak Susceptibility rating.
Investigation Modules
ThreatNG provides dedicated investigation modules that pinpoint the specific exposed asset and the nature of the data at risk.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This module focuses on external cloud risks, including open-exposed cloud buckets on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. This provides the security team with the exact cloud provider and misconfigured asset name.
Mobile Application Discovery: This module is critical for detecting code secrets within mobile apps that could lead to bucket discovery. It assesses for the presence of Platform Specific Identifiers, such as an Amazon AWS S3 Bucket name directly within the app's contents.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module discovers public code repositories and assesses for leaked Access Credentials and Cloud Credentials, such as AWS Access Key ID Value, AWS Secret Access Key, or AWS Account ID. These exposed credentials can grant an attacker internal access to cloud resources, including buckets, even if the buckets aren't publicly exposed.
Intelligence Repositories
ThreatNG uses its Intelligence Repositories (DarCache) to provide a broader context for risk prioritization.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): An exposed cloud bucket is often the result of an access key leak. ThreatNG's repository checks for Compromised Credentials, which, when combined with Sensitive Code Exposure findings, provides Certainty Intelligence that a credential leak also accompanies the misconfiguration.
Reporting
ThreatNG's reporting ensures that findings on open cloud buckets are communicated as critical, actionable risks.
Prioritized Reporting: The platform delivers Prioritized Reports (High, Medium, Low), flagging a publicly exposed cloud bucket with the highest priority due to its immediate risk of data exfiltration.
External GRC Assessment: Findings, such as exposed cloud buckets, are mapped directly to relevant GRC frameworks, including PCI DSS, HIPAA, and NIST CSF. This provides the justification needed to accelerate remediation by proving that the misconfiguration is an immediate compliance failure.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external verification of exposed cloud resources can be used to validate and enforce policies in internal cloud management tools.
Working with Cloud and Infrastructure Security (CNAPP) Platforms (e.g., Orca Security, Wiz): Internal CNAPP tools audit cloud environments using internal credentials. ThreatNG complements this by providing purely external, unauthenticated validation. If a CNAPP platform reports a secure configuration, but ThreatNG's Cloud and SaaS Exposure module reports an Open Exposed Cloud Bucket (because the CNAPP tool missed an edge-case external sharing setting), ThreatNG provides the Legal-Grade Attribution that forces the cloud engineering team to prioritize the external fix over the internal report.
Working with Security Monitoring (SIEM/XDR) Systems (e.g., Splunk, Elastic Security): An SIEM system can be configured to watch logs for file access attempts on critical resources. When ThreatNG discovers and validates an exposed open cloud bucket in an external assessment, that high-certainty intelligence can be fed to the SIEM. This allows the SIEM team to create a specific, highly aggressive monitoring rule for the exact exposed bucket name, ensuring that any future external access attempts are immediately flagged as confirmed malicious reconnaissance or data exfiltration attempts, rather than just routine traffic. ThreatNG is a highly effective platform for mitigating the risk posed by Open Cloud Bucket Discovery because its core capabilities are built around identifying and validating these specific configuration mistakes from an external attacker's perspective.
It performs continuous, unauthenticated reconnaissance to discover what cloud assets are truly exposed, even if they were unintentionally or mistakenly configured.
External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG ensures all organization-related cloud storage is accounted for and continuously watched for configuration changes that could lead to exposure.
External Discovery: The platform performs purely external unauthenticated discovery to map an organization's entire digital footprint, including identifying its presence across major cloud platforms. This outside-in approach is crucial because attackers exploit assets that security teams are unaware of or have forgotten.
Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG continuously monitors the external attack surface. This ensures that newly exposed cloud resources or changes in security posture are immediately flagged, preventing transient misconfigurations from becoming long-term risks.
External Assessment
ThreatNG's assessments specifically check for open cloud storage and quantify the risk of the resulting data leak, directly addressing a misconfiguration that is a leading cause of cloud data breaches.
Cloud Exposure Assessment: ThreatNG specifically includes Cloud Exposure findings in multiple security ratings, which is defined as exposed open cloud buckets.
Data Leak Susceptibility Security Rating: This rating is derived from uncovering external digital risks across categories, including Cloud Exposure (specifically exposed open cloud buckets). A low rating (e.g., F) provides a clear, objective metric that an organization is highly susceptible to a data leak because a public cloud bucket was found.
Cyber Risk Exposure Security Rating: This rating also accounts for Cloud Exposure (exposed open cloud buckets) as a key finding.
Example of Assessment: If a development team accidentally misconfigures an AWS bucket and sets it to publicly readable, ThreatNG's external assessment will successfully detect this misconfiguration from the outside. This finding is then classified as an Exposed Open Cloud Bucket, which directly contributes to the degradation of the Data Leak Susceptibility rating.
Investigation Modules
ThreatNG provides dedicated investigation modules that pinpoint the specific exposed asset and the nature of the data at risk.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This module is explicitly focused on discovering Open Exposed Cloud Buckets of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. This provides the security team with the exact cloud provider and misconfigured asset name.
Sensitive Code Exposure: This module discovers public code repositories and assesses for leaked Access Credentials and Cloud Credentials, such as AWS Access Key ID and AWS Secret Access Key. An attacker can exploit these exposed credentials to gain access to cloud resources, including buckets.
Intelligence Repositories
ThreatNG uses its Intelligence Repositories (DarCache) to provide context for prioritizing the remediation of exposed assets.
Compromised Credentials (DarCache Rupture): An exposed cloud bucket may be found if an access key is leaked. ThreatNG's repository checks for Compromised Credentials. When combined with Sensitive Code Exposure findings, this provides the irrefutable evidence that the misconfiguration is also accompanied by a credential leak, raising the urgency.
Reporting
ThreatNG's reporting ensures that findings on open cloud buckets are communicated as critical, actionable risks.
Prioritized Reporting: The platform delivers Prioritized Reports (High, Medium, Low), flagging a publicly exposed cloud bucket with the highest priority due to its immediate risk of data exfiltration and compliance violations.
External GRC Assessment: Findings, such as exposed cloud buckets, are mapped directly to relevant GRC frameworks, including PCI DSS, HIPAA, and NIST CSF. This provides the justification needed to accelerate remediation by proving that the misconfiguration is an immediate compliance failure.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external verification of exposed cloud resources provides the objective, attacker's view needed to validate and enforce policies in internal cloud management tools, eliminating blind spots.
Working with Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Platforms: ThreatNG complements an internal CSPM tool by providing the external truth. If ThreatNG’s Cloud and SaaS Exposure module reports an Open Exposed Cloud Bucket, this intelligence can be fed to the CSPM platform. The CSPM, which has internal access, can then use ThreatNG's external findings to immediately trigger a deeper, authenticated internal scan and initiate automated remediation efforts, such as adjusting the bucket's access control settings or implementing encryption, thereby enhancing the overall cloud security posture.
Working with Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) Platforms: When ThreatNG discovers a leaked AWS Secret Access Key via the Sensitive Code Exposure module, it delivers high-certainty evidence. This intelligence can be used by a SOAR platform to automatically initiate an incident response playbook, which may include revoking the exposed key and triggering a lockdown on the associated cloud account, drastically reducing the window of exploitation.
