This week TLDR i.e. 1 minute version (For executives):
Amazon S3 Metadata is now generally available.
AWS DataSync adds support for Kerberos authentication.
AWS Client VPN announces support for concurrent VPN connections.
Trending in Cloud & Cyber Security:
AWS Security Blogs & Bulletins:
Security Bulletin: Issue with AWS Sign-in IAM User Login Flow – Possible Username Enumeration (CVE-2025-0693). Link.
Testing and evaluating GuardDuty detections. Link.
AWS Firewall Manager retrofitting: Harmonizing central security with application team flexibility. Link.
Announcing upcoming changes to the AWS Security Token Service global endpoint. Link.
General security blogs, articles, reports & trending news/advisories:
How to create an EC2 WebServer with SSRF to try AWS iMDSv1 exploit (& bonus iMDSv2 exploit)? Link.
How to Start Threat Modelling in AWS by Ihor Sasovets. Link.
The State of the Cybersecurity Market in 2024 by Mike Privette. Link.
Bitwarden Verifying new devices to strengthen vault security. Link.
Clone2Leak: Your Git Credentials Belong To Us by RyotaK. Link.
Lumma Stealer: Fake CAPTCHAs & New Techniques to Evade Detection by Leandro Fróes. Link.
Datadog threat roundup: top insights for Q4 2024 by Matt Muir, Andy Giron, Adrian Korn, Greg Foss, Oren Margalit. Link.
PANdora's Box: Vulnerabilities Found in NGFW by Jesse Michael, Mickey Shkatov, Paul Asadoorian. Link.
How Social Engineering Phishing Works: My Real-Life Encounter by Ran Isenberg. Link.
Google Chrome Sync will be sunset on versions of Chrome that are more than four years old. Link.
This week Long i.e. 3-5 minutes version (For architects & engineers):
AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Metadata which offers automated, easily queryable metadata that updates in near real time, enabling streamlined business analytics, real-time inference applications, and more. It supports both system-defined metadata—such as object size and source—and custom metadata, allowing you to tag objects. Link. AWS blog HERE. For example, here’s my S3 bucket metadata and I was able to query metadata using Athena & Apache Spark.
AWS DataSync now supports Kerberos authentication for self-managed file servers utilizing the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol, which offers improved security options for connecting to SMB file servers (typically used in Microsoft Windows environments). Link. Here’s my configuration example:
AWS announced the general availability (GA) of concurrent VPN connections for AWS Client VPN, allowing users simultaneous connections to multiple Client VPN profiles. Previously, AWS Client VPN allowed connection to only one VPN profile at a time, limiting access to a single network. With this new feature, you can now connect to multiple VPN profiles at once without needing to switch. Link. For example, my latest MacOS AWS VPN client (version 5.0.1)has 5 profile options now. (Note: You can download the client from HERE.)