S3 bucket is vulnerable to ransomware or deletion via internal access

s3

Description

An S3 bucket lacks protective configurations against ransomware or data destruction attacks through internal access. The bucket does not have versioning enabled, Object Lock default retention is not configured, and MFA Delete is not enabled, meaning an attacker who compromises internal IAM credentials with delete permissions can permanently destroy or encrypt bucket contents without the ability to recover previous versions. This attack path enables ransomware-style attacks where data is deleted or overwritten with encrypted versions and held for ransom.

Remediation

  1. Enable S3 versioning to maintain previous versions of objects, allowing recovery from accidental or malicious deletions.
  2. Enable S3 Object Lock with default retention to automatically protect new objects from being deleted or overwritten.
  3. Enable MFA Delete to require multi-factor authentication for permanent deletion of object versions.