My 44CON Cloud Security and DevSecOps training course this June includes AWS, Azure and GitHub accounts which the students use so they don’t need to create their own. As I described in Part 1, I also decided to build a training platform, so that students can connect to a virtual desktop in the cloud with all the software they need pre-installed.

That way they can come on to the course with any laptop or even tablet which supports the Amazon WorkSpaces client.

I built the supporting infrastructure in AWS using Terraform – a great tool for infrastructure as code – see Part 2 for more details and screenshots.

Click on the "Read More" link below to see how I automated the user setup.

The Cloud Security and DevSecOps training course I’m delivering for 44CON in June includes AWS, Azure and GitHub accounts which the students use so they don’t need to create their own. As I described in my last blog, I also decided to build a training platform, so that students can connect to a virtual desktop in the cloud with all the software they need pre-installed.
 
That way they can come on to the course with any laptop or even tablet which supports the Amazon WorkSpaces client.
 
The next step after the proof of concept and design was to build it using as much automation as possible – to keep cost low, I wanted to easily destroy everything as soon as a course finished, and to rebuild just before starting the next one. 

Click on the "Read More" link below to see details of the infrastructure as code.

Here are the slides for my talk "Real-life Cloud Security Issues" which I presented recently at the Photobox meetup "An evening of AWS Security". Many thanks to all at Photobox for a great evening, and to Tash Norris and Toni de la Fuente for their excellent talks - I've already incorporated Toni's open source Prowler tool to the AWS compliance lab in my cloud security course at 44CON. 

The Cloud Security and DevSecOps training course I’m delivering for 44CON in June includes AWS, Azure and GitHub accounts which the students use so they don’t need to create their own.

​So I started looking at building a training platform which students can use – and as this is a cloud security course, what better place to do this than in the cloud?

Click on the "Read More" link below to see the proof of concept and design.

Yesterday I took the new 2019 version of the AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional exam – roughly 2 weeks after it was launched in February.
 
….click on the "Read More" link to see my journey

I'm looking forward to demonstrating real-life cloud security issues next week at "An evening of AWS Security" at Photobox's new offices in London

My recent talk at DevSecCon London 2018 "a journey to continuous cloud compliance" is now on YouTube:

To see the presentation slides, click on "Read More"

AWS Lambda is a widely used cloud service which allows customers to create event driven serverless functions of short duration. To find out whether a bad lambda function could lead to AWS account takeover, I created some code to deploy one and uploaded to GitHub.

The code returns the environment variables of the container in which the lambda function is being executed - this simulates what could happen if the Lambda function was vulnerable to an injection attack or a malicious dependency was included in the code.

An attacker can simply take these credentials and use the AWS command line to perform any actions within the AWS account which are allowed by the Identity and Access Management (IAM) role assigned to the Lambda function. In my example code, this is access to AWS Secrets Manager. In the worst case, it could be access to IAM allowing an attacker to set up their own administrator account.

So the answer is YES - if the AWS Lambda function is vulnerable, and the assigned role has excessive permissions, a bad Lambda function can lead to AWS account takeover.

To protect an AWS account from takeover due to bad Lambda functions, see my blog 10 Steps to Lambda security. Click on the read more link below for screenshots and technical details.

AWS Lambda, launched in 2015, is a service which allows customers to create event driven serverless functions of short duration.

Since then Lambda has become amazingly popular, Lambda functions are widely used for many different purposes ranging from low latency web applications and IoT, to AWS account operational and maintenance tasks.

Just like any other application in the cloud, a vulnerable or poorly configured Lambda function can lead to data loss, privilege escalation and even AWS account takeover, see for example this blog post.
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I’ve created “10 steps to Lambda security” based on my experience of working with customers using AWS Lambda:

Continuous cloud compliance is essential to maintain the security of applications and systems in the cloud. At DevSecCon London next week I'll be talking about my experiences in this area, and how an effective solution needs to include prevention, detection and remediation elements.

In my talk "A journey to continuous cloud compliance", I'll give a live demonstration of techniques and approaches with a system I've built in AWS using Capital One's open source Cloud Custodian project, combined with Lambda functions and other AWS services to provide customised notifications via email and Slack.

Click on the read more link to see other examples of alerts and automated remediation.