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No, I think you're right. The author conflates Amazon's own access to data encrypted at rest, which is what this appears to be about, with other security issues
by ctvo 4y ago
No, I think you're right. The author conflates Amazon's own access to data encrypted at rest, which is what this appears to be about, with other security issues. This will help prevent, say, old hard drives being disposed of improperly, concerns around AWS employees easily viewing your data, etc..
Nothing will help if the credentials that grant access to read the encrypted data are what's compromised.
- TillE 4y agoIf decryption takes place on a different machine than the stored data, there's plenty you can do to separate how those are accessed. It's not a perfect system, but it is a legitimate extra layer of security.
- ctvo 4y agoI'm unsure which point you're following up on. Yes, it's a legitimate extra layer of security if you do what you're suggesting, but that's not what's occurring here, though it may be what's happening within AWS's own data centers. But again, let's not conflate the two. From a customer's perspective: calling AWS will return the data unencrypted regardless of if this flag is on because AWS will decrypt before returning it, seamlessly. If the credentials allow access to the S3 bucket, that's that, and your data will still be compromised regardless if this feature is on or off.