13 ms·

I can confidently tell you that Amazon's employees cannot see customers data inside S3 buckets or EC2 instances. They are extremely serious about that stuff sin

I can confidently tell you that Amazon's employees cannot see customers data inside S3 buckets or EC2 instances. They are extremely serious about that stuff since they know that will erode their customer's confidence. But there's probably other superficial business data that's helpful to evaluate that.

KorfmannArno 6y ago
1. Did you work on a team at Amazon in the likes of what user throwaway_aws mentioned? 2. What measures that you know of is Amazon implementing to make sure no employees across all teams are having access to said resources?
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  As I said below this is something that they will talk a about like every freaking day. They talk about customer’s data as the most important thing to take care of. Basically is preferable to get a bullet in the head than to ever reveal or tamper with customer’s data. I cannot answer your question about who has access or not but I’m telling you what’s the culture when it comes to customer’s data. At the end of the day I was just another IC doing menial work so probably not a good reference, but that was my experience
kaesar14 6y ago
Amazon is a massive company. How can you know this with confidence? Are you in the C-Suite?
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  It’s the thing they tell you the most when you work there. Like in a a obnoxious way. Most infosec training is about that. If someone has access to customer’s data for their work they have to do a bunch of extra training and do other stuff. Potentially sign some things and there’s probably a different way to authenticate. I really don’t know because I never had to do that and nobody I knew had that type of access but I heard when you do you have to put with more things.
  - kaesar14 6y ago
    But then what about other commenters saying that this is exactly what their sectors of the company do? Do you think it's impossible that a massive company like Amazon that controls an ungodly amount of the Internet would break those rules? Especially when the government of their home country hasn't pursued an antitrust case in God knows how long
    - whoisjuan 6y ago
      Yeah I don’t know. It’s possible that there’s some evil stuff happening. I’m just relating my experience as a pawn employee. They parrot this incessantly.
    - notatoad 6y ago
      >But then what about other commenters saying that this is exactly what their sectors of the company do? i don't see anybody claiming that amazon is harvesting data from inside their customer's infrastructure. amazon has a lot of data that's "amazon's data" that would tell them about businesses that are operating on AWS that might be ripe for competition. For example, they know what your AWS bill is, and how it's been trending. If you pay a huge bandwidth bill and it goes up 50% each month, they know you've got a business model that's working and that they can undercut you on one of your big expenses.
      - kaesar14 6y ago
        You're right that other commenters aren't necessarily saying that they're peering into buckets and PII...but I err on the side of questioning that the company is committing wrongdoing.
    - losteric 6y ago
      Amazon does not trawl customer data. However, metrics like AMI popularity is Amazon's data... and that definitely informs first-class AWS product development. Once the company identifies a business opportunity, different teams often investigate "build" and "buy" options simultaneously. Same goes for retail - Amazon works backwards from high-margin categories to identify opportunities, then pursues investment in existing brands versus spinning up products under the company brands. This all feels very monopolistic to me, but regardless it's worlds apart from the accusation of stealing private information through faux investment offerings.
TimSchumann 6y ago
> I can confidently tell you that Amazon's employees cannot see customers data inside S3 buckets or EC2 instances. From a technical standpoint, that statement is false. Every employee might not have the credentials to, but for AWS to function as it does, SOMEONE inside the company has to have those credentials. If you change 'cannot' to 'don't', well then we've just gotta take you at your word, which is where we started anyway.
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  Yeah. True. I guess what I meant is that just a handful of employees have access to that and they need to have legitimate reasons.
- ibejoeb 6y ago
  The critical factor here is whether there are controls in place to prevent it. Sure, somebody probably could, but what to what lengths must that person go to do it, and what happens when it is discovered? Most things are not technically impossible, after all.
- count 6y ago
  Except they get audited by 3rd parties on statements like that, and have controls tested. It's not like they're just ... digital ocean or somebody.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jasonjayr 6y ago
    Do you have evidence of this claim re DO? I worked with a DO on an technical issue, and they were steadfastly against me granting them temporary access to our servers even though it would have made the issue easier to diagnose. Cloud provider that verifiably get caught doing this will quickly lose the trust of all their large customers
    - webo 6y ago
kerng 6y ago
This is incorrect, at least from a logical POV and why it's hard to trust what cloud vendors say. A statement like this is either naive (most likely) or actively attempting to mislead. Technically, its absolutely possible. Most likely you'll just need a support ticket or bug, and then you can troll around as engineer. Also, security teams also usually have access to stuff when things get interesting. Better to say that access is strictly on a case by case basis and monitored thoroughly. Ideally customer is notified each time it happens - that would be cool, but likely technically not possible since data ends up in so many systems (like logs, SIEM, telemetry, debug files, backups, data scientist desktops,....)
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  I already corrected my statement in another reply. You're right. I said probably only a handful of people can access customer data to do their job. I personally never met one. The goal of my comment was to illustrate that in my experience handling customer data there was a big deal. It's not like something you can casually query to see if a particular customer has a good business or not.
- donavanm 6y ago
  > Ideally customer is notified each time it happens - that would be cool, but likely technically not possible You're underestimating the investments that AWS (and Amazon at large) make in to security, confidentiality, and auditing. You're also missing a fundamental implication of building AWS on AWS primitives. As a relevant example there is only one AWS IAM and one CloudTrail. It's a core tenant of AWS IAM to put that control and root of trust in to the customers control. That means when developer support is helping with your ticket they do so via your accounts AWSServiceRoleForSupport role. That means you can control whether that role exists, which principals can assume it, the capabilities it has, and you can see those same API calls in your CloudTrail logs. Although it would make support difficult you're welcome to delete that service linked role and prevent support.amazonaws.com from assuming said role in your account. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awssupport/latest/user/using-service-linked-roles-sup.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awssupport/latest/user/using-ser...
  - 6y ago
luizfelberti 6y ago
I'm sorry but what you just said is patently false: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-29/capital-one-data-systems-breached-by-seattle-woman-u-s-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-29/capital-o... Quote: Capital One Financial Corp. said data from about 100 million people in the U.S. was illegally accessed after prosecutors accused a Seattle woman identified by Amazon.com Inc. as one of its former cloud service employees of breaking into the bank’s server. While the complaint doesn’t identify the cloud provider that stored the allegedly stolen data, the charging papers mention information stored in S3, a reference to Simple Storage Service, Amazon Web Services’ popular data storage software.
- jburgess777 6y ago
  My reading of this is that the ex-employee used the knowledge about EC2 instance credentials being accessible as a path to gain unauthorized access to data. In theory anyone could have exploited this vulnerability even if they had never worked for Amazon. They never say that Amazon employees had privileged credentaials that would give them unauthorized access to customer data. AWS customers that want to avoid this vulnerability should disable IMDSv1 as per https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/defense-in-depth-open-firewalls-reverse-proxies-ssrf-vulnerabilities-ec2-instance-metadata-service/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/defense-in-depth-open-...
  - donavanm 6y ago
    There was zero inside knowledge and they were an ex employee at all times relevant to the incident. The EC2 instance credentials via the metadata url is public documented functionality. Its how things like the SDK “just work.” The S3 bucket policy, instance creds, and (inferred) overly permissive IAM policy is all public documented functionality. This looks like a simple case of an initial intrusion being escalated via permissive configuration and controls. There would be no story if the suspect had not been employed by AWS in the past. Disclaimer: Im a Principal jn AWS but have no direct or inside knowledge of this incident. Everything I know or have stated here is public record (eg the indictment) or public AWS docs.
- didibus 6y ago

KorfmannArno 6y ago

1. Did you work on a team at Amazon in the likes of what user throwaway_aws mentioned? 2. What measures that you know of is Amazon implementing to make sure no employees across all teams are having access to said resources?

whoisjuan 6y ago
As I said below this is something that they will talk a about like every freaking day. They talk about customer’s data as the most important thing to take care of. Basically is preferable to get a bullet in the head than to ever reveal or tamper with customer’s data. I cannot answer your question about who has access or not but I’m telling you what’s the culture when it comes to customer’s data. At the end of the day I was just another IC doing menial work so probably not a good reference, but that was my experience

kaesar14 6y ago

Amazon is a massive company. How can you know this with confidence? Are you in the C-Suite?

whoisjuan 6y ago
It’s the thing they tell you the most when you work there. Like in a a obnoxious way. Most infosec training is about that. If someone has access to customer’s data for their work they have to do a bunch of extra training and do other stuff. Potentially sign some things and there’s probably a different way to authenticate. I really don’t know because I never had to do that and nobody I knew had that type of access but I heard when you do you have to put with more things.
- kaesar14 6y ago
  But then what about other commenters saying that this is exactly what their sectors of the company do? Do you think it's impossible that a massive company like Amazon that controls an ungodly amount of the Internet would break those rules? Especially when the government of their home country hasn't pursued an antitrust case in God knows how long
  - whoisjuan 6y ago
    Yeah I don’t know. It’s possible that there’s some evil stuff happening. I’m just relating my experience as a pawn employee. They parrot this incessantly.
  - notatoad 6y ago
    >But then what about other commenters saying that this is exactly what their sectors of the company do? i don't see anybody claiming that amazon is harvesting data from inside their customer's infrastructure. amazon has a lot of data that's "amazon's data" that would tell them about businesses that are operating on AWS that might be ripe for competition. For example, they know what your AWS bill is, and how it's been trending. If you pay a huge bandwidth bill and it goes up 50% each month, they know you've got a business model that's working and that they can undercut you on one of your big expenses.
    - kaesar14 6y ago
      You're right that other commenters aren't necessarily saying that they're peering into buckets and PII...but I err on the side of questioning that the company is committing wrongdoing.
  - losteric 6y ago
    Amazon does not trawl customer data. However, metrics like AMI popularity is Amazon's data... and that definitely informs first-class AWS product development. Once the company identifies a business opportunity, different teams often investigate "build" and "buy" options simultaneously. Same goes for retail - Amazon works backwards from high-margin categories to identify opportunities, then pursues investment in existing brands versus spinning up products under the company brands. This all feels very monopolistic to me, but regardless it's worlds apart from the accusation of stealing private information through faux investment offerings.

TimSchumann 6y ago

> I can confidently tell you that Amazon's employees cannot see customers data inside S3 buckets or EC2 instances. From a technical standpoint, that statement is false. Every employee might not have the credentials to, but for AWS to function as it does, SOMEONE inside the company has to have those credentials. If you change 'cannot' to 'don't', well then we've just gotta take you at your word, which is where we started anyway.

whoisjuan 6y ago
Yeah. True. I guess what I meant is that just a handful of employees have access to that and they need to have legitimate reasons.
ibejoeb 6y ago
The critical factor here is whether there are controls in place to prevent it. Sure, somebody probably could, but what to what lengths must that person go to do it, and what happens when it is discovered? Most things are not technically impossible, after all.
count 6y ago
Except they get audited by 3rd parties on statements like that, and have controls tested. It's not like they're just ... digital ocean or somebody.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jasonjayr 6y ago
  Do you have evidence of this claim re DO? I worked with a DO on an technical issue, and they were steadfastly against me granting them temporary access to our servers even though it would have made the issue easier to diagnose. Cloud provider that verifiably get caught doing this will quickly lose the trust of all their large customers
  - webo 6y ago

kerng 6y ago

This is incorrect, at least from a logical POV and why it's hard to trust what cloud vendors say. A statement like this is either naive (most likely) or actively attempting to mislead. Technically, its absolutely possible. Most likely you'll just need a support ticket or bug, and then you can troll around as engineer. Also, security teams also usually have access to stuff when things get interesting. Better to say that access is strictly on a case by case basis and monitored thoroughly. Ideally customer is notified each time it happens - that would be cool, but likely technically not possible since data ends up in so many systems (like logs, SIEM, telemetry, debug files, backups, data scientist desktops,....)

whoisjuan 6y ago
I already corrected my statement in another reply. You're right. I said probably only a handful of people can access customer data to do their job. I personally never met one. The goal of my comment was to illustrate that in my experience handling customer data there was a big deal. It's not like something you can casually query to see if a particular customer has a good business or not.
donavanm 6y ago
> Ideally customer is notified each time it happens - that would be cool, but likely technically not possible You're underestimating the investments that AWS (and Amazon at large) make in to security, confidentiality, and auditing. You're also missing a fundamental implication of building AWS on AWS primitives. As a relevant example there is only one AWS IAM and one CloudTrail. It's a core tenant of AWS IAM to put that control and root of trust in to the customers control. That means when developer support is helping with your ticket they do so via your accounts AWSServiceRoleForSupport role. That means you can control whether that role exists, which principals can assume it, the capabilities it has, and you can see those same API calls in your CloudTrail logs. Although it would make support difficult you're welcome to delete that service linked role and prevent support.amazonaws.com from assuming said role in your account. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awssupport/latest/user/using-service-linked-roles-sup.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/awssupport/latest/user/using-ser...
- 6y ago

luizfelberti 6y ago

I'm sorry but what you just said is patently false: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-29/capital-one-data-systems-breached-by-seattle-woman-u-s-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-29/capital-o... Quote: Capital One Financial Corp. said data from about 100 million people in the U.S. was illegally accessed after prosecutors accused a Seattle woman identified by Amazon.com Inc. as one of its former cloud service employees of breaking into the bank’s server. While the complaint doesn’t identify the cloud provider that stored the allegedly stolen data, the charging papers mention information stored in S3, a reference to Simple Storage Service, Amazon Web Services’ popular data storage software.

jburgess777 6y ago
My reading of this is that the ex-employee used the knowledge about EC2 instance credentials being accessible as a path to gain unauthorized access to data. In theory anyone could have exploited this vulnerability even if they had never worked for Amazon. They never say that Amazon employees had privileged credentaials that would give them unauthorized access to customer data. AWS customers that want to avoid this vulnerability should disable IMDSv1 as per https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/defense-in-depth-open-firewalls-reverse-proxies-ssrf-vulnerabilities-ec2-instance-metadata-service/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/defense-in-depth-open-...
- donavanm 6y ago
  There was zero inside knowledge and they were an ex employee at all times relevant to the incident. The EC2 instance credentials via the metadata url is public documented functionality. Its how things like the SDK “just work.” The S3 bucket policy, instance creds, and (inferred) overly permissive IAM policy is all public documented functionality. This looks like a simple case of an initial intrusion being escalated via permissive configuration and controls. There would be no story if the suspect had not been employed by AWS in the past. Disclaimer: Im a Principal jn AWS but have no direct or inside knowledge of this incident. Everything I know or have stated here is public record (eg the indictment) or public AWS docs.
didibus 6y ago