An AWS customer faced a hefty bill of $1,300 due to misconfiguration of a popular open-source tool that stored backups in their empty S3 bucket, causing nearly 100,000,000 unauthorized requests and highlighting the risks of misconfigured systems writing to unintended S3 buckets, leading to unexpected costs and potential security breaches. The customer's public experiment collecting data within seconds raised concerns about data leaks. Key lessons included using random suffixes in bucket names for security, specifying AWS regions to avoid additional costs, and being aware of AWS charges for unauthorized requests
The incident led to fixes in the open-source tool but with potential lingering issues, AWS canceling the bill as an exception, and highlighted the need for AWS customers to vigilantly monitor their S3 usage, adhere to secure bucket naming, and understand the risks of misconfigurations.https://cybersecuritynews.com/an-empty-s3-bucket-led-to-a-massive-aws-bill/