AWS Security Digest

Monday,
November 11, 2024

🥖 Palette Cleanser

Imagine you could time travel and transfer your consciousness into Jeff Barr's body on November 9th 2004, as he was writing the first-ever AWS blog post. What would you write?

20 years ago Jeff wrote, "We plan to provide you with useful information about AWS, products built with AWS, web services development tools, interviews with successful AWS developers, case studies, and information about the web services industry." It wasn’t the world's spiciest take but I feel like he nailed it based on what I see every week in this newsletter. Congrats, Jeff and the AWS team on 20 years of content.

I'm off tending to my marriage next week. Somehow "I have an ASD issue to do" is not a valid reason to miss an anniversary. Issue 184 will be prepared and delivered by a guest author, at the same time as always. Please be sure to let them know what you think of their work.

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📋 Chef's selections

Effective Techniques for AWS Ransomware by Chris Farris

Writing how-to guides for ransomware is bold strategy as a well-meaning defender of the clouds. I'm a fan of sharing attack details as a way to balance information asymmetries that favor attackers. Chris mentions that the code was entirely generated by AI, so it's not exactly secret sauce however I'd still love to see Chris regain the urge to provide more detection details.
Modern AWS Access: Moving from IAM Users to AWS Identity Center by Rowan Udell

In issue #181 I quipped that "46% of you savages are still using IAM users". It appears Rowan took it upon himself to bring civilization to the hordes. This guide provides a comprehensive way to structure your migration for a technical program manager. It doesn't include details on how to execute each step, so you'll still need to research those yourself.
Cost-effective AWS Security Best Practices: Our Experience and Tips by Ihor Sasovets, Rotem Levi, Victoria Shutenko, Victor Grenu

I would be lying if I said I read this article end-to-end. It's a lot. There are 4 parts, which you could consume individually if they interested you. 1: AWS WAF implementation considerations; 2: An overview of the open-source AWS Security Survival Kit; 3: AWS compliance tool options; 4: Some general cloud security tips.

🥖 Palette Cleanser

📋 Chef's selections

🥗 AWS security blogs

🍛 Reddit threads on r/aws

🤖 Dessert

🧁 IAM permission changes

🍪 API changes

🍹 IAM managed policy changes

☕ CloudFormation resource changes

🎮 Amazon Linux vulnerabilities

📺 AWS Security Bulletins