Top 10 Exploits in Cloud Architecture

1. IAM Privilege Escalation

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is the core security boundary of modern cloud computing. Privilege escalation within IAM occurs when an attacker exploits lax or overly permissive policies attached to a compromised identity. In many cases, developers attach wildcard administrative permissions ("*") to service roles, believing they are restricted by network settings. Attackers seek out these misconfigured services (such as serverless functions or container environments) and execute API calls to modify the active roles or generate long-lived administrator access tokens.

A classic privilege escalation technique involves the "CreateNewPolicyVersion" permission. If a compromised role possesses this permission, an attacker can simply write a brand new, highly privileged policy version (such as full AdministratorAccess) and set it as the active version. This bypasses structural bounds without triggering traditional endpoint detection alerts, highlighting why identity is the new network perimeter.

# Threat Vector: Attacker attempts to update IAM policy from lambda role
aws iam attach-role-policy --role-name low-privilege-lambda --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AdministratorAccess

2. Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) on Metadata Services

In cloud infrastructure, instances query the Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) at a specific non-routable IP address: 169.254.169.254. This metadata server contains highly sensitive runtime information, including host configurations, internal network variables, and critically, temporary IAM credentials belonging to the host's IAM role. In unhardened IMDSv1 environments, metadata queries are simple HTTP GET requests without any authentication headers.

Attackers exploit Server-Side Request Forgery (SSRF) bugs in public-facing web applications to make the target server query its own metadata server on behalf of the attacker. Once the metadata server returns the temporary IAM credentials, the attacker can copy them and access the cloud control plane from their local machine. Hardening against this requires a transition to IMDSv2, which mandates session-oriented token handshakes.

3. Exposed Object Storage Buckets

Object storage systems like AWS S3 and Azure Blob Storage house massive datasets ranging from user records to system backups. Despite default blocks on public access, storage buckets frequently leak data due to legacy permission inheritance or explicit user policies overriding safety baselines. Attackers scan active cloud IP scopes for bucket names, scraping exposed files containing API keys, private databases, or configurations.

Preventing storage leaks requires systematic, non-overrideable controls. Organizations must deploy absolute Block Public Access settings at the root account level and enforce real-time configurations monitoring using posture management tools.