Where Is Cloud Exploitation Being Used?
Cloud Exploitation Being Used
Organizations depend on cloud services to reduce costs, speed deployments, develop at scale and share data easily without the need for centralized infrastructure. However, the same capabilities that make it possible to work remotely also create new security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by criminals.
Unlike on-premise applications, cloud services are publicly accessible on the Internet and outside of an organization’s network perimeter. This makes it easier for threat actors to scan, find and compromise a cloud service for access to corporate information, or use the compromised infrastructure as a proxy into the network.
Attackers are also increasingly targeting public APIs provided by cloud providers to attack organizations. Insecure APIs are a common source of vulnerability that attackers leverage to launch DDoS attacks and gain unauthorized access to enterprise data. With advanced techniques like hijacking, spoofing and evasion, it is easy for attackers to launch sophisticated attacks using these public APIs.
Cloud storage is the most popular target for cloud exploitation. Cybercriminals exploit a variety of tools in cloud storage to deliver malware payloads and phishing pages. Often, attackers take advantage of the fact that many users share their files in the cloud to share links or files. This allows them to bypass traditional web filters and evade detection by masking the malicious content.
Where Is Cloud Exploitation Being Used?
Organizations also store all types of sensitive corporate data in the cloud. This includes customer records, financial documents and intellectual property. This data is gold to cybercriminals who can sell it on the Dark Web or use it to extort victims by demanding large ransom payments.
To mitigate these risks, it’s critical to understand where is cloud exploitation being used and take steps to prevent the exploitation of a company’s cloud assets.
Understanding Cloud Exploitation and its impact
A key challenge for cloud security is the fact that a significant percentage of cloud services are used without IT’s knowledge. This can lead to malware infections, lateral movement within the organization and the exfiltration of sensitive information. It can also decrease the visibility of an organization’s cloud environment, making it difficult to detect when a threat is infiltrating its infrastructure.
In addition, unauthorized cloud services can increase the probability of malware infections and phishing attacks because threat actors can access them with ease. In the case of a phishing campaign, attackers can create a fake authentication page in a cloud service to harvest legitimate credentials or login data and then use them as an entry point into a corporate network.
Best practices to Prevent Cloud Exploitation
Investors are growing more pessimistic about the sector and have sent shares of cloud-software companies tumbling. One gauge of the space, the WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund, is down more than 51% this year. The drop is largely due to rising interest rates. Valuations in the tech industry are based on the present value of future cash flows, so higher interest rates imply lower expected revenue.