Top AWS, Azure, and GCP misconfigurations our pentests still uncover

Even with the maturity of cloud-native security tools, misconfigurations remain one of the most common weaknesses uncovered in pentests. Platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP offer flexible and scalable architectures, but that same flexibility often leads to complexity, visibility gaps, and poorly secured defaults.

At Strike, we continuously perform pentests on cloud apps and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) setups across industries. The results are consistent: small oversights in configuration can open massive attack surfaces. If you want to understand where cloud security truly fails—and how proactive testing can prevent it—keep reading.

1. Open storage buckets exposing sensitive data

Few issues are as persistent as publicly accessible storage. Despite years of awareness campaigns, we still find open S3 buckets in AWS, Blob containers in Azure, and Cloud Storage buckets in GCP with unrestricted read or write permissions.

Attackers can easily exploit these exposures to access internal code, credentials, or customer data—sometimes even deployment artifacts.

Common root causes include:

• Missing or incorrect access control lists (ACLs).
  
• Overly broad public access policies (“Everyone: Read”).
  
• Lack of continuous auditing of storage permissions.
  

Testing IaC templates (like Terraform or CloudFormation) is essential to detect these exposures before they reach production. A simple misconfigured resource in code can replicate insecure defaults across multiple environments.

2. Over-permissive IAM roles and credentials

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is at the heart of cloud security, but pentests consistently reveal roles with excessive privileges—for example, users with AdministratorAccess in AWS or Owner roles in Azure and GCP.

These findings are critical because a compromised credential with wide privileges can lead to full environment takeover.

Typical misconfigurations include:

• Granting wildcard permissions (*) in IAM policies.
  
• Sharing credentials across environments or services.
  
• Failing to enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for privileged accounts.
  
• Storing keys and secrets in code repositories or public images.
  

Pentesting IAM configurations helps identify escalation paths that automated scanners often miss—like chained privilege abuse, lateral movement between tenants, or resource hijacking through compromised service accounts.

3. Insecure network and security group configurations

Misconfigured security groups, firewalls, and virtual networks are another common finding during pentests. Even a single open port can become the entry point for a broader compromise.

We often encounter:

• Security groups in AWS or NSGs in Azure allowing 0.0.0.0/0 inbound access to management ports (SSH, RDP).
  
• Unrestricted internal network peering between dev and production environments.
  
• Exposed Kubernetes dashboards or metadata APIs.
  

To minimize risks:

• Implement least privilege in network rules.
  
• Segment environments logically (dev, staging, prod).
  
• Continuously validate rules with automated and manual testing.
  

When Strike tests cloud apps, we simulate both external and internal attack vectors, because misconfigurations that seem harmless in isolation can combine to create exploitable paths.

4. Poorly secured CI/CD pipelines and IaC templates

As teams adopt Infrastructure as Code (IaC), configurations can now spread at the speed of deployment. Unfortunately, many IaC templates replicate insecure settings.

Common pentest findings include:

• Hardcoded credentials in Terraform or ARM templates.
  
• Default configurations that skip encryption at rest or in transit.
  
• Excessive privileges assigned to build service accounts.
  
• Missing validation or code reviews for deployment scripts.
  

Testing IaC before deployment should be a standard part of your DevSecOps process. It not only ensures compliance with internal security baselines but also prevents vulnerabilities from being propagated automatically.

Tools like Checkov, tfsec, or Azure Policy can catch many of these issues early, but manual pentests reveal logic flaws—like the ability to chain misconfigurations or escalate from one service to another.

5. Lack of monitoring and incident response readiness

Finally, even well-configured environments fail when there’s no visibility into malicious activity. In pentests, we often simulate attacks that go completely unnoticed due to:

• Disabled or misconfigured logging in CloudTrail (AWS), Activity Logs (Azure), or Cloud Audit Logs (GCP).
  
• Alerts not being forwarded to a central SIEM.
  
• Inconsistent or outdated response playbooks.
  

A mature cloud security posture depends on combining secure configuration with continuous monitoring and pentesting. Detecting misconfigurations early is key, but detecting active exploitation is even more important.

Turning cloud complexity into security confidence

Misconfigurations in AWS, Azure, and GCP can turn even the most advanced cloud environments into open playgrounds for attackers. But these issues are not inevitable—they’re detectable.

Strike’s Premium Pentesting and Automated Scans validate not only your cloud apps but also the configurations that support them, helping teams close the gap between security intent and real protection.

If your organization relies on IaC or multi-cloud deployments, it’s time to make testing part of your standard workflow. Because in the cloud, configuration is security.