Cloud Security

During August and September of 2023, Microsoft engaged NCC Group to conduct a security assessment of Caliptra v0.9. Caliptra is an open-source silicon IP block for datacenter-focused server-class ASICs. It serves as the internal root-of-trust for both measurement and identity of a system-on-chip. The main use cases for Caliptra are…

AWS allows tags, arbitrary key-value pairs, to be assigned to many resources. Tags can be used to categorize resources however you like. Some examples: In an account holding multiple applications, a tag called “application” might be used to denote which application is associated with each resource. A tag called “stage”…

To ensure security of new 5G telecom networks, NCC Group has been providing guidance, conducting code reviews, red team engagements and pentesting 5G standalone and non-standalone networks since 2019. As with any network various attackers are motivated by different reasons. An attacker could be motivated to either gain information about…

Introduction Long time has passed since Microsoft implemented the first Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) approach in Azure Active Directory with the Per-user MFA functionality [1]. However, this simple on/off mechanism has been replaced over time by the Conditional Access Policy (CAP) feature, which was released on July 2016. A conditional access policy is a set…

tl;dr You can now have Scout Suite scan not only your cloud environments, but your Kubernetes clusters. Just have your kubeconfig ready and run the following commands: $ pip3 install ScoutSuite $ scout kubernetes Background NCC Group’s Container Orchestration Security Service (COSS) practice regularly conducts Kubernetes cluster configuration reviews spanning…

Modern organizations evolved and took the next step when they became digital. Organizations are using cloud and automation to build a dynamic infrastructure to support more frequent product release and faster innovation. This puts pressure on the IT department to do more and deliver faster. Automated cloud infrastructure also requires…

We are excited to announce the release of a new version of our open-source, multi-cloud auditing tool ScoutSuite (on Github)! This version includes multiple bug fixes, dependency updates and feature enhancements for AWS, Azure and GCP. It also adds and updates several rules for these three cloud providers, alongside improved…

Robust exception handling is one of the tenets of best practice for development, no matter what the coding language. This blog post explores the curious circumstances in which a developer trying to do the right thing – but without appreciating the full effects – could lead to data integrity issues…

As one of the proud contributors to the newest version of the CIS Google Cloud Platform Foundation Benchmark, I wanted to raise awareness about the new version release of this benchmark [1] by the Center for Internet Security (CIS) and how it can help a company to set a strong…

We’re proud to announce the release of a new version of our open-source, multi-cloud auditing tool ScoutSuite (on Github)! The most significant improvements and features added include: Core Improved CLI options, test coverage and some dependencies AWS Added new findings for multiple services Bug fixes Added ARNs for all resources…

As one of the proud contributors to the Center for Internet Security (CIS) Microsoft 365 Foundation Benchmark, I wanted to raise awareness about the new version release by the Center for Internet Security (CIS) released on February 17th, and how it can help a company to have a secure baseline…

Erik Steringer, NCC Group Overview TL;DR: Go check out https://github.com/ncc-erik-steringer/Aerides As public cloud service consumption has grown, engineering and security professionals have responded with different tools and techniques to achieve security in the cloud. As a consultancy, we at NCC Group have published multiple tools that we use to guide…

Written by Ben Lister and Kane Ryans This blog post details the collaboration between NCC Group’s Detection Engineering team and our Containerisation team in tackling detection engineering for Kubernetes. Additionally, it describes the Detection Engineering team’s more generic methodology around detection engineering for new/emerging technologies and how it was used…

Unauthorised access to data is a primary concern of clients who commission a Salesforce assessment. The Salesforce documentation acknowledges that the sharing model is a “complex relationship between role hierarchies, user permissions, sharing rules, and exceptions for certain situations”[1]. It is often said that complexity and security are natural enemies.…

Principal Mapper, or PMapper, is a tool and library for in-depth analysis with AWS Identity and Access Management, as well as AWS Organizations. PMapper stores data about AWS accounts and organizations, then provides options to query, visualize, and analyze that data. The library, written in Python, enables users to extend…

Introduction At NCC Group, we routinely assess the configuration of our clients’ cloud environments. These reviews aim to ensure that the environments are in line with security best practice and provide appropriate protection for sensitive information and resources. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) has grown steadily since 2011 – both in…

Conducting a thorough Azure security build review or Azure security assessment can be difficult. Clicking through the Azure Ibiza [1] portal to review the details on many of its services, including, but not limited to, Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), resource groups, virtual machines, storage accounts, databases, database servers and…

Introduction As more of our services move to rented virtual servers, applying centralised protective monitoring becomes more of a challenge. Offerings such as Assuria’s Cloud Security Suite and Splunk’s Storm show the demand for elastic and easily configurable monitoring that can be deployed on cloud provisioned infrastructure. Amazon has responded…