All news with #cloud account compromise tag

🔒 Google links the North Korean actor UNC4899 to a 2025 cloud compromise that leveraged personal-to-corporate file transfers (AirDrop) and malicious code embedded in a shared archive. Attackers pivoted from a compromised developer device into Google Cloud, abused CI/CD and Kubernetes workflows, and manipulated Cloud SQL to extract funds. The campaign employed living-off-the-cloud techniques and persisted by injecting commands into deployment configurations. Recommended mitigations include phishing-resistant MFA, strict secrets management, and restricting P2P file sharing on corporate endpoints.

🔒 In December 2025, Zscaler ThreatLabz exposed the Ruby Jumper campaign linking North Korea's ScarCruft to a novel multi-stage intrusion that abuses cloud storage and removable media. The attack begins with a malicious LNK that launches PowerShell to extract an embedded decoy document and multiple payloads, including the in-memory loader RESTLEAF. RESTLEAF uniquely leverages Zoho WorkDrive for C2 to fetch shellcode and stage follow-on components, while SNAKEDROPPER, THUMBSBD, and VIRUSTASK enable persistence, surveillance, and propagation to air-gapped systems via USB.

⚠️ Sysdig researchers observed an AI-assisted intrusion in November 2025 that converted exposed AWS credentials in a public S3 bucket into full administrative control in under eight minutes. The attackers exploited an IAM user with Lambda and limited Amazon Bedrock access, injected malicious code into an existing Lambda function, and generated admin keys from the function output. They then moved laterally across multiple principals, invoked multiple foundation models (LLMjacking), disabled model-invocation logging, and attempted to provision costly GPU instances to run ML workloads. Sysdig recommends enforcing least privilege, restricting UpdateFunctionCode and PassRole, protecting S3 buckets, enabling Lambda versioning, and turning on Bedrock logging.

⚠️ Over recent months a global scam campaign has bombarded users with fraudulent cloud-storage renewal notices claiming payment failures and imminent deletion of photos and backups. The emails use auto-generated sender domains and links hosted on Google Cloud Storage that redirect to phishing pages impersonating cloud portals. Those pages run fake storage scans, promote unrelated affiliate products, and lead to checkout forms that collect credit card details. Delete these messages and verify billing only through official apps or websites.

🔎 Mandiant and Google GTIG observed an expansion of ShinyHunters-style campaigns using sophisticated vishing and victim-branded credential harvesting sites to steal SSO credentials and MFA codes. Compromised accounts were used to access a broadening set of cloud SaaS applications to locate confidential documents and PII for extortion. Activity attributed to clusters UNC6661, UNC6671, and UNC6240 includes harassment, DDoS, and Limewire-hosted proof samples. Organizations should adopt phishing-resistant MFA such as FIDO2 or passkeys and follow published hardening and detection guidance.

⚠️ A recent Pentera investigation discovered nearly 2,000 intentionally vulnerable security-testing web applications (DVWA, OWASP Juice Shop, Hackazon, bWAPP) exposed on the public internet, often running from overly privileged cloud accounts on AWS, GCP and Azure. Attackers exploited these instances to deploy crypto miners, install webshells and create persistence mechanisms, then pivot to sensitive cloud resources. Affected vendors including Cloudflare, F5 and Palo Alto Networks were notified and remediated issues. Pentera recommends inventories, isolation of test systems, enforcement of least-privilege IAM, and elimination of default credentials.

🔒 A recent Hudson Rock report reveals a threat actor known as Zestix (aka Sentap) harvested credentials from infostealer logs and accessed cloud file-sharing services such as ShareFile, Nextcloud and OwnCloud because affected organizations did not enforce multi-factor authentication. The actor exfiltrated and auctioned highly sensitive corporate and customer data. The incidents underscore persistent failures in credential hygiene, long-lived stolen credentials and the necessity of MFA and session invalidation.

🛡️Attackers abused Google Cloud Application Integration to send thousands of malicious emails that appeared to originate from the legitimate address noreply-application-integration@google.com. The messages impersonated routine enterprise notifications—voicemail alerts, file-access and permission requests—raising the chance recipients would click links or disclose credentials. Check Point observed 9,394 phishing emails targeting about 3,200 customers over 14 days.

⚠️ Amazon GuardDuty and AWS automated monitoring identified a coordinated crypto‑mining campaign beginning November 2, 2025, that used compromised IAM credentials to deploy miners on Amazon EC2 and Amazon ECS. Attackers enumerated quotas and permissions, launched large EC2 fleets and ECS Fargate tasks from a malicious Docker Hub image, and used persistence techniques such as disabling API termination and creating public Lambda URLs. GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection correlated signals to surface critical attack sequences and AWS provides IoCs and mitigation guidance including strong identity controls, CloudTrail logging, Runtime Monitoring, and remediation playbooks.

🔒 Amazon Threat Intelligence has attributed with high confidence a years‑long campaign to Russia’s GRU, noting a shift in 2025 from exploiting software flaws to compromising misconfigured customer network edge devices. The actor has targeted enterprise routers, VPN concentrators, network management appliances and cloud-hosted edge instances, including some hosted on AWS, to gain initial access. This tactic supports credential harvesting, replay attacks and lateral movement while reducing attacker exposure and resource expenditure.

🔒 Recent research from the Wiz Customer Incident Response Team shows attackers are using exposed GitHub Personal Access Tokens (PATs) to retrieve GitHub Action Secrets and pivot into cloud environments. A read-level PAT can leverage GitHub’s API code search to locate secret references like "${{ secrets.SECRET_NAME }}" — and because those search API calls are not logged, discovery is stealthy. Once obtained, cloud provider credentials let attackers spin up resources, exfiltrate data, install malware, or persist while often evading detection. Organizations should treat PATs as privileged credentials: enforce expiration and rotation, remove cloud secrets from workflows, apply least privilege, and improve monitoring and developer training.

🔒 Salesforce says it revoked active access and refresh tokens tied to Gainsight-published applications after detecting unusual activity that may have enabled unauthorized access to some customers' CRM data. The company says the issue stems from the app's external connection rather than a vulnerability in Salesforce itself and temporarily removed those apps from the AppExchange. Affected customers have been notified and can contact Salesforce Help for assistance.

🔒 Phishing is moving beyond email to platforms like LinkedIn, where direct messages sidestep traditional email defenses and evade many web-based controls. Attackers exploit account takeovers, weak MFA adoption, and AI-driven outreach to scale targeted campaigns against executives and cloud identity services. Because LinkedIn messages are accessed on corporate devices but outside email channels, organizations often rely on user reporting and URL blocking—measures that are slow and ineffective. Vendor Push Security recommends browser-level protections that analyze page code and behavior in real time to block in-browser phishing and SSO-based compromises.

🔐 Identity compromise is driving large-scale AWS abuse, with attackers leveraging stolen access keys to test accounts and weaponize Amazon SES for Business Email Compromise and invoice fraud. FortiGuard Labs attributes the reconnaissance layer to a campaign named TruffleNet that uses TruffleHog and automated AWS CLI/Boto3 requests to validate credentials and probe SES quotas. Fortinet recommends continuous monitoring, least-privilege access, MFA, and integrated detection via FortiCNAPP and related controls to detect and block these activities.

🔒Researchers detail a threat cluster called Jingle Thief that leverages phishing and smishing to harvest credentials and compromise cloud environments of retailers and consumer services to issue unauthorized gift cards. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 links the activity to financially motivated actors and notes coordinated campaigns in April-May 2025. The attackers favor identity misuse over malware, persistently mapping tenants, abusing Microsoft 365 services, and minimizing logs to sustain large-scale fraud.

🔍Unit 42 details the Jingle Thief campaign, a Morocco‑based, financially motivated operation that uses phishing and smishing to harvest Microsoft 365 credentials and abuse cloud services to commit large‑scale gift card fraud. The actors maintain prolonged, stealthy access for reconnaissance across SharePoint, OneDrive and Exchange, and rely on internal phishing, inbox rules and rogue device enrollment in Entra ID to persist and issue unauthorized cards. The report (cluster CL‑CRI‑1032) links the activity to Atlas Lion/STORM‑0539 and emphasizes identity‑centric detections and mitigations.

🔍 Microsoft Threat Intelligence observed a financially motivated actor tracked as Storm-2657 conducting targeted 'payroll pirate' intrusions against US universities to divert salary payments. The actor used realistic phishing and adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) links to harvest credentials and MFA codes, gained access to Exchange Online, abused SSO to reach Workday profiles, and created inbox rules to hide payroll notifications. Microsoft recommends adopting phishing-resistant, passwordless MFA and provides detections and remediation guidance.

🔒 SonicWall has confirmed that an unauthorized actor accessed firewall configuration backup files stored in its cloud backup service for customers. The files include encrypted credentials and device configuration data; while encryption remains in place, SonicWall warned that possession of these backups could increase the risk of targeted attacks. The vendor says access was achieved via brute-force attacks and that suspicious activity was first detected in early September 2025. Working with Mandiant, SonicWall has issued remediation tools, published impacted device lists in the MySonicWall portal, and is notifying affected partners and customers.

🔒 Researchers report the 'Crimson Collective' has been targeting long-term AWS credentials and IAM accounts to steal data and extort companies. Using open-source tools like TruffleHog, the attackers locate exposed AWS keys, create new IAM users and access keys, then escalate privileges by attaching AdministratorAccess. They snapshot RDS and EBS volumes, export data to S3, and send extortion notices via AWS SES. Rapid7 urges organisations to audit keys, enforce least privilege, and scan for exposed secrets.

🛡️ Darktrace researchers uncovered a ShadowV2 campaign that leverages exposed Docker APIs on AWS EC2 to provision containers and run a Go-based remote access trojan, converting misconfigured cloud containers into distributed DDoS nodes. The attackers create containers on victim hosts rather than importing malicious images, likely to reduce forensic traces, and use the Python Docker SDK to interact with exposed daemons. ShadowV2 operators employ advanced techniques including HTTP/2 rapid reset and Cloudflare evasion, and the platform includes APIs, a Tailwind/FastAPI UI and operator logins that turn botnet control into a commercialized DDoS-as-a-Service offering.