Monday, May 12, 2025
HomeAWSHackers Attacking Vaults, Buckets, And Secrets To Steal Data

Hackers Attacking Vaults, Buckets, And Secrets To Steal Data

Published on

SIEM as a Service

Follow Us on Google News

Hackers target vaults, buckets, and secrets to access some of the most classified and valuable information, including API keys, logins, and other useful data kept within these storage solutions.

These storage solutions’ centralized and often inadequately protected nature makes them exceptional targets for the threat actors.

Cybersecurity analysts at DATADOG Security Labs discovered that hackers have been attacking the vaults, buckets, and secrets to steal data.

- Advertisement - Google News

Hackers Attacking AWS Vaults

From 2024-05-23 to 2024-05-27, analysts detected abnormal behavior in a client’s AWS during threat hunting. IP 148[.]252.146.75 attempted ListSecrets and ListVaults API calls. 

Enriched as a potential UK Vodafone residential proxy. Activity in another AWS included ListBuckets to enumerate S3 buckets, then ListObjects on available buckets – automated per event times.

Free Webinar on API vulnerability scanning for OWASP API Top 10 vulnerabilities -> Book Your Spot

No GetSecretValue, BatchGetSecretValue, or GetObject were observed despite the S3 data events that were enabled. While the reasons are:- 

  • Broad automated campaign assessing available data before exfiltration

or 

  • Testing AWS identity access level for resale value determination

First, the attacker was observed targeting the S3 Glacier vault backup data. After failed enumeration, subsequent InitiateJob calls were expected to retrieve the vault archive list and specific archive, then GetJobOutput to download. 

Attackers commonly mask location using VPNs like free Cloudflare WARP, whose AWS API calls may seem less suspicious than other VPN providers

Attack chain (Source – DATADOG Security Labs)

The requests-auth-aws-sigv4 Python library likely generated the identified user agent for manually signing AWS API requests, unlike typical AWS CLI or Boto3 SDK usage, which handles Sigv4 signing automatically. 

Manually managing to sign provides no real advantage but could indicate suspicious activity if unexpected in your environment.

Recommendations

Researchers recommend detection and response teams closely examine this campaign due to the potentially severe operational impact of the exfiltration of production LLM data and resources from your cloud environment.

Here below, we have mentioned all the detection opportunities:-

  • Utilize IoCs to detect specific campaigns.
  • Enrich CloudFlare IPs if expected API calls.
  • Multiple regions ListSecret/ListVault in a short period.
  • 17 regions under 1 minute in observed data.
  • Spikes in AccessDenied for ListSecrets, ListBuckets, ListObjects, ListVaults.
  • Suspicious AccessDenied spikes indicate a lack of proper permissions.

Free Webinar! 3 Security Trends to Maximize MSP Growth -> Register For Free

Tushar Subhra
Tushar Subhra
Tushar is a Cyber security content editor with a passion for creating captivating and informative content. With years of experience under his belt in Cyber Security, he is covering Cyber Security News, technology and other news.

Latest articles

VMware Tools Vulnerability Allows Attackers to Modify Files and Launch Malicious Operations

Broadcom-owned VMware has released security patches addressing a moderate severity insecure file handling vulnerability...

Metasploit Update Adds Erlang/OTP SSH Exploit and OPNSense Scanner

The open-source penetration testing toolkit Metasploit has unveiled a major update, introducing four new...

Google Researchers Use Mach IPC to Uncover Sandbox Escape Vulnerabilities

Google Project Zero researchers have uncovered new sandbox escape vulnerabilities in macOS using an...

Cybercriminals Hide Undetectable Ransomware Inside JPG Images

A chilling new ransomware attack method has emerged, with hackers exploiting innocuous JPEG image...

Resilience at Scale

Why Application Security is Non-Negotiable

The resilience of your digital infrastructure directly impacts your ability to scale. And yet, application security remains a critical weak link for most organizations.

Application Security is no longer just a defensive play—it’s the cornerstone of cyber resilience and sustainable growth. In this webinar, Karthik Krishnamoorthy (CTO of Indusface) and Phani Deepak Akella (VP of Marketing – Indusface), will share how AI-powered application security can help organizations build resilience by

Discussion points


Protecting at internet scale using AI and behavioral-based DDoS & bot mitigation.
Autonomously discovering external assets and remediating vulnerabilities within 72 hours, enabling secure, confident scaling.
Ensuring 100% application availability through platforms architected for failure resilience.
Eliminating silos with real-time correlation between attack surface and active threats for rapid, accurate mitigation

More like this

VMware Tools Vulnerability Allows Attackers to Modify Files and Launch Malicious Operations

Broadcom-owned VMware has released security patches addressing a moderate severity insecure file handling vulnerability...

Metasploit Update Adds Erlang/OTP SSH Exploit and OPNSense Scanner

The open-source penetration testing toolkit Metasploit has unveiled a major update, introducing four new...

Google Researchers Use Mach IPC to Uncover Sandbox Escape Vulnerabilities

Google Project Zero researchers have uncovered new sandbox escape vulnerabilities in macOS using an...