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Unmasking Cloud Identities: From Behavioral Clustering to Automated Detection
Unit 42 clusters behavior of 40,000+ AWS identities from 125 cloud environments to map functional roles and enable lightweight SQL-based detection.
Palo Alto Unit 42 built an unsupervised behavioral clustering model using UMAP and HDBSCAN on AWS CloudTrail logs to map cloud identities to functional roles such as administrators, backup services, security tooling and DevOps. The study analyzed over 40,000 identities across 125 cloud environments over two months. The researchers show that heuristics extracted from the clustering map can be implemented in standard SQL, enabling role classification at scale without running a continuous ML pipeline. The methodology extends to audit logs from other cloud providers, SaaS and Kubernetes.
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AWS Certificate Manager sets 2027 end date for email-validated certificate renewals
AWS Certificate Manager will phase out email validation for public certificates during 2027, requiring migration to DNS validation before September 30, 2027.
AWS Certificate Manager will stop offering email validation in new Regions on January 1, 2027, discontinue it for new certificate requests on March 31, 2027, and stop renewing email-validated certificates on September 30, 2027. This precedes the CA/Browser Forum's March 15, 2028 deadline ending email-based domain validation for publicly trusted certificates. AWS is updating the UpdateCertificateOptions API so customers can switch to DNS validation in place while retaining the certificate ARN, with Route 53 support for creating required CNAME records.
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AWS Console Private Access can block sign-ins to personal accounts
AWS Console Private Access goes GA, letting internet-isolated VPCs reach the console fully over PrivateLink and blocking personal account sign-ins.
AWS Console Private Access became generally available on August 28, allowing the AWS Management Console, sign-in flows, static assets, and console-only APIs to run entirely over PrivateLink endpoints from VPCs with no internet connectivity. Deployment requires three interface endpoints per Region, correct Private DNS and security group settings, and uses aws:PrincipalOrgID policies plus sign-in resource control policies to deny authentication from unexpected networks, which blocks corporate-network users from signing into personal AWS accounts. IAM Identity Center sign-in and consoles for services without PrivateLink support still need internet access, and a misconfigured policy can lock out the whole organization, so AWS recommends an excluded break-glass role; CLI and SDK SigV4 requests bypass these policies and serve as a recovery path.
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Week in review: AiTM phishing kit used to hijack AWS accounts, year-long malware campaign targets HR
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