Ransomnews counts 484,142 listable cloud buckets holding 18 billion files
Original title: 484,142 Exposed Cloud Buckets Contain 18 Billion Files
An October 7 snapshot found 321,058 credential and key files without opening any objects, and the authors say many buckets are public on purpose.
Ransomnews published the Cloud Exposure Index after counting 484,142 publicly listable buckets and 18.05 billion files from search engines that index open cloud storage. Amazon S3 held 347,984 buckets (71.9%), Azure Blob 68,532, and Google Cloud Storage 53,131. The team used names, extensions, counts, and timestamps only, and said the index is a pool where breaches can hide rather than 484,142 breaches.
Unconfirmed: Counts come from names and metadata, not opened files; sector labels and the Azure operational-data skew are unproven hypotheses.
- Of exposed .env files, 67% were last modified in 2026.
- About 4.7 million database and dump files and 15,130 mailbox archives were listed.
- Regulated-sector names appear on 10,891 unique open buckets.
- Azure Blob is 14.2% of open buckets but 51% of HR or payroll names.
- The authors plan to rerun the index quarterly.
Impact: Listable buckets may expose keys, dumps, mail, and backups
| Product | Affected |
|---|---|
| Amazon S3 | — |
| Microsoft Azure Blob | — |
| Google Cloud Storage | — |
| DigitalOcean Spaces | — |
| Alibaba OSS | — |
- Organizations
- Ransomnews
From the original article
7 min read at securityaffairs.com
42 publicly listable cloud buckets containing 18 billion files, including exposed credentials, database dumps and backups. The Ransomnews research team counted 484,142 publicly listable cloud storage buckets in October 2026, holding 18. 05 billion files.
By Pierluigi Paganini · securityaffairs.com
A short excerpt; the article and its images belong to the publisher. Summary, key facts and assessment above are AI-written from the article and can be wrong.