EC-Council Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) v12Cloud ComputingMedium
A security team is analyzing a recent data breach where an attacker exploited a misconfigured Identity and Access Management (IAM) policy in a cloud environment. The attacker gained unauthorized access to sensitive S3 buckets by leveraging overly permissive roles assigned to a compute instance. Which cloud computing threat category does this scenario primarily fall under?
- AAccount Hijacking
- BInsufficient Identity, Credential, and Access Management
- CInsecure Interfaces and APIs
- DShared Technology Vulnerabilities
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: B. Insufficient Identity, Credential, and Access Management
The scenario explicitly describes an exploitation due to a misconfigured IAM policy and overly permissive roles, which directly relates to insufficient controls around identity, credentials, and access management within the cloud environment.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Account hijacking involves an attacker taking over legitimate user accounts, which is a possible outcome but not the root cause described.
- C. While APIs are involved in IAM, the root cause was the policy misconfiguration, not an inherent insecurity in the API itself.
- D. Shared technology vulnerabilities relate to flaws in hypervisors or underlying infrastructure, which is not indicated here.
Insufficient Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM)
A cloud security threat arising from weak or poorly configured controls for managing user identities, authentication credentials, and access permissions.
- Leads to unauthorized access.
- Often results from overly permissive roles or misconfigured policies.
- A common vector for data breaches in cloud environments.
Memory trick: IAM is like the bouncer; if they're weak, anyone gets in.