Introduction
As organizations accelerate cloud adoption, misconfigurations remain the leading cause of data breaches and service disruptions. In 2025, new cloud-native services and automation platforms have expanded the attack surface, making continuous misconfiguration assessment essential.
1. Public Storage Misconfigurations
Unintentionally exposed buckets or blob containers can leak sensitive data.
- AWS S3: Check with
aws s3api list-buckets --query "Buckets[].Name"and test each:aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name - Azure Blob: Discover containers via
az storage container list --account-name youraccount - GCP Storage: List buckets:
gsutil lsand test public read:gsutil acl get gs://bucket-name
2. Over-Permissive IAM Policies
Granting wildcard permissions increases risk of privilege abuse.
- Use IAM policy analyzers:
aws iam simulate-principal-policy --policy-input-list file://policy.json --action-names "*" - Azure:
az role assignment list --assignee [email protected] - GCP:
gcloud projects get-iam-policy my-project
3. Misconfigured Network Security
Security groups or firewall rules with 0.0.0.0/0 expose services to the internet.
- Audit AWS SGs:
aws ec2 describe-security-groups --filters Name=ip-permission.cidr,Values=0.0.0.0/0 - Azure NSG:
az network nsg rule list --nsg-name myNsg - GCP FW:
gcloud compute firewall-rules list --filter="sourceRanges:0.0.0.0/0"
4. Exposed Metadata Endpoints
Fetching metadata without restrictions can lead to credential theft.
Test via:
curl -H "Metadata:true" "http://169.254.169.254/metadata/instance?api-version=2021-02-01"5. Serverless Function Permissions
Functions with overly broad roles can be abused to access other services.
- Review AWS Lambda roles:
aws lambda get-policy --function-name myFunction - Azure Functions:
az functionapp identity show --name myFuncApp
Mitigations & Best Practices
- Implement least privilege and policy as code
- Enable automated misconfiguration scanning (CSPM)
- Log and monitor config changes via CloudTrail/Sentinel
- Use network microsegmentation and private endpoints