Practical guide to the most frequent cloud misconfigurations, why they matter, and concrete first-step fixes. Includes a short checklist and remediation patterns to reduce exposure from public storage, permissive IAM, exposed management planes, metadata abuse, insecure images, lax Kubernetes RBAC, and weak logging.
Common Cloud Misconfigurations — The Oops That Become Exploits "The cloud is fast, cheap, and infinite. Misconfigurations are faster, cheaper, and more catastrophic." — Your future incident report You already know the basics from the Shared Responsibility Model and Identity & Acces...
Why this matters (without the hand-holding) Misconfigurations are behind a large fraction of high-impact cloud breaches. Not an advanced zero-day. A mis-click, a copied Terraform module, or a blanket "*" role. These mistakes create attack surfaces that let attackers pivot, exfiltrate, ...
The Usual Suspects (top misconfigurations, why they matter, and how to fix them) 1) Publicly exposed storage (S3, Blob, GCS buckets) What it looks like: Buckets or blobs set to public-read or public-write; permissive ACLs or bad bucket policies. Why it hurts: Data leakage, credential exposure,...
2) Overly permissive IAM roles and wildcard policies What it looks like: Policies with "Action": " " or Principal: " " or roles attached to EC2/ECS with full admin. Why it hurts: One compromised instance => full account takeover (yes, full ). Breaks the principle...
3) Exposed management planes and open ports Examples: Kubernetes API accessible from the internet, SSH or RDP ports wide open to 0.0.0.0/0, public etcd, unsecured Redis. Why it hurts: Direct admin takeover; lateral movement; data exfiltration. Fix: Place management interfaces in private subnet...
4) Metadata service abuse (EC2/GCE metadata endpoints) What it looks like: Applications that fetch instance credentials from metadata service without protections; SSRF vulnerability in a web app. Why it hurts: SSRF -> metadata -> temporary IAM creds -> pivot. Fix: Harden app inputs ag...
5) Insecure container images and registries What it looks like: Pulling random images from Docker Hub, using unscanned images, registry with anonymous push enabled. Why it hurts: Backdoored images, supply-chain infection, privilege escalations from images that run as root. Fix: Use image signi...
6) Misconfigured Kubernetes RBAC & admission controls What it looks like: Wild RBAC ClusterRoleBindings, kubelet anonymous auth enabled, admission webhooks disabled. Why it hurts: Pod takeover, secret access, cluster-wide compromise. Fix: Tight RBAC, enable PodSecurityAdmission/OPA/Gatekee...
7) Weak logging, monitoring, and alerting What it looks like: No centralized logs, disabled CloudTrail/Activity logs, alerts only for fatal events. Why it hurts: You don’t detect the attacker until they’ve left the apartment with your TV. Fix: Enable immutable logging, ship logs to a central S...
Quick comparative table: Misconfiguration vs Impact vs First-step fix Misconfiguration Typical Impact First-step Fix Public buckets Data leak Block public access Wildcard IAM Account takeover Principle of least privilege Open mgmt plane Direct takeover Private subnets + ba...
10 study modes available based on your content