nagwww/s3-leaksCurated timeline of AWS S3 bucket misconfigurations, exposed data, and leaked IAM credentials, with incident links for cloud security defenders and researchers.
Feel free to send in a PR if you know of other leaks
| Date | Description | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2017 | AWS hosted elastic search servers hijacked |
| The 24,668 exposed files include: Copies of passports/government-issued IDs Resumes with phone numbers, home and email addresses, and other private information Copies of degree/university certificates |
| August 2023 | MPD FM, a facility management and security company providing services to various UK government departments | Passports/ VISAs/ National IDs/ Driving licenses/ Birth certificates/Vetting reports Right-to-work/ checks /Job contracts /Proof of address / Bank statements |
| May 2023 | London-based outsourcing giant Capita | exposed to the internet since 2016, contained approximately 3,000 files totaling 655GB in size |
| Jan 2023 | Pegasus Airlines Leaked 6.5TB of Data in AWS S3 Bucket Mess Up | Airlines Leaked 6.5TB |
| Aug 2022 | Cloud Misconfig Exposes 3TB of Sensitive Airport Data in Amazon S3 Bucket: 'Lives at Stake' | That is sure a lot of data on S3 |
| July 2022 | McGraw Hill's S3 buckets exposed 100,000 students' grades and personal info | 22 TB of data and over 117 million files |
| Aug2020 | S3 bucket mess up exposed 182GB of senior US, Canada citizens data | The misconfigured S3 bucket was owned by SeniorAdvisor, a consumer ratings and reviews website. |
| July2020 | Twilio: Someone broke into our unsecured AWS S3 silo, added 'non-malicious' code to our JavaScript SDK | Attackers tried to update the javascript library hosted on the s3 buckets so this can be picked up by other clients |
| Jan 2020 | "Exposed AWS buckets again implicated in multiple data leaks" | Passport scans, tax documents, background checks, job applications, expense claims, contracts, emails and salary details relating to thousands of consultants working in the UK were exposed. |
| June 2020 | "7.2 million records were exposed, but not from the BHIM app" |
| Oct 2018 | Misconfigured database breaches thousands of MedCall Advisors patient files | names, email and postal addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. Other files had recordings of patient evaluations and conversations with doctors, along with medications, allergies and other detailed personal health data. |
| Jun 2019 | AWS S3 server leaks data from Fortune 100 companies: Ford, Netflix, TD Bank | Attunity, an Israeli IT firm that provides data management, warehousing, and replication services for the world's biggest companies, has exposed some of its customers' data after it left three Amazon S3 buckets exposed on the internet without a password. |
| May 2019 | How a Vendor for Half the Fortune 100 Exposed a Terabyte of Backups |
| Mar 2018 | Medical Records and Patient-Doctor Recordings Were Exposed | information for employees of 181 business locations, as well as personally identifiable information (PII) for nearly 3,000 individuals was publicly exposed in an unsecured |
| Mar 2018 | Jewelry site accidentally leaks personal details (and plaintext passwords!) of 1.3M users | addresses, zip-codes, e-mail addresses, and IP addresses. He also claims the database contained plaintext passwords |
| Feb 2018 | S3 bucket open to world : Octoly | real names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses |
| Jan 22 | Sensitive medical records on AWS bucket found to be publicly accessible |
| Dec 2017 | Alteryx leave S3 bucket open for anonymous user : 120m american households exposed | Home addresses, contact information, mortgage status, financial histories |
| Nov 2017 | 111 GB of internal customer information from National Credit Federation, a Tampa, Florida-based credit repair service | - SSN - Drivers licesne, credit reports |
| Nov 2017 | Uber, the hack happend couple months back was brought to light in Nov 2017> | personal information of 57 million Uber users and driver's license numbers |
| Nov 2017 | NSA leak exposes Red Disk, the Army's failed intelligence system | 100 gigabytes of data from an Army intelligence project, codenamed "Red Disk." |
| Nov 2017 | Australia data leak: Nearly 50,000 government and private staffers’ sensitive data publicly exposed | S3 bucket left open by a contractor |
| Oct 2017 | How A Cloud Leak Exposed Accenture's Business |
| Oct 2017 | Patient Home Monitoring Service Leaks Private Medical Data Online | publically accessible Amazon S3 47.5 GB / 316,363 |
| Sep 2017 | Viacom : Open S3 bucket with AWS Keys, passwords, other sensitive info | S3 bucket open to the world |
| Sep 2017 | Leaky S3 bucket sloshes deets of thousands with US security clearance | - Bucket open to the world in the test account |
| Sep 2017 | Millions of Time Warner Cable Customer Records Exposed in Third-Party Data Leak |
| August 2017 | Indian Creditseva Data Breach |
| August 2017 | Open AWS S3 bucket leaked hotel booking service data |
| July 2017 | S3 bucket was set to authenticate all AWS users, not just Dow Jones users |
| July 2017 | Massive WWE Leak Exposes 3 Million Wrestling Fans' Addresses, Ethnicities And More |
| July 2017 | Verizon, the major telecommunications provider, has suffered a data security breach with over 14 million US customers' personal details exposed on the Internet |
| June 2017 | Personal information belonging to more than 198 million registered U.S. voters was exposed |
| May 2017 | Top Defense Contractor Left Sensitive Pentagon Files on Amazon Server With No Password |
| May 2017 | Security company finds unsecured bucket of US military images on AWS |
| April 2017 | A California auto loan company left the names, addresses, credit scores and partial Social Security numbers of up to 1 million people exposed |
| Feb 2017 | CHILDREN’S VOICE MESSAGES LEAKED IN CLOUDPETS DATABASE BREACH |
| Jan 2017 | Paytm S3 bucket misconfiguration allowing PUT operations |
| March 2013 | Thousands of Amazon S3 buckets left open exposing private data |
| # | Organization / Date | Root Cause / Credential Exposure | Impact & Details | Relevance to Static Keys / S3 Usage |
|---|
| 1 | Large-scale AWS Keys Database & Ransomware Campaign (2025) | Public server exposed >158M AWS secret key records; 1,229 active keys used to encrypt S3 buckets and demand ransom. | Attackers encrypted S3 data using SSE-C without owner awareness. | Demonstrates that static keys become commodities → direct ransomware targeting S3. |
| 4 | Large Leak of Environment Variables (2024) | Palo Alto Networks study: >90,000 leaked .env files; 1,185 contained AWS access keys. | Keys leaked from repos, CI/CD logs, misconfigured files. | Reinforces that static/long-lived keys end up everywhere → high-risk credentials. |
| 5 | Developer Canary Token Test (2024) | Researcher placed a fake AWS key on GitHub; it was used within minutes (days when placed only on a website). | Demonstrated active scanning for AWS keys in public code. | Proves exposure-to-compromise window is minutes → rapid detection & rotation required. |
| 6 | AWS Engineer Leak (Jan 2020) | Public GitHub repo by an AWS engineer contained system credentials including AWS key-pairs (one named rootkey.csv). | Repo discovered within ~30 minutes; AWS remediated same day. | Even cloud vendors have human error → continuous scanning is essential. |
| 7 | Generic Code-Repo Exposures (2019–2020) | Multiple cases of AWS keys committed to GitHub/VCS; Medium posts highlight accidental leaks & attacker automation. | Often unnoticed but cumulatively large attack surface. | Emphasizes importance of scanning for AKIA..., reviewing last-used dates, disabling stale keys. |
| 8 | Honey-Bucket S3 Recon Research (2023) | Researchers deployed honey-buckets showing automated scans/downloads/deletes as soon as credentials or endpoints surfaced. | Showed constant automated reconnaissance in the wild. | Demonstrates that once keys or endpoints leak, S3 becomes an immediate target. |
| 9 | www.codespaces.com (17th of June 2014) | he attacker gained access to one of Code Spaces’ AWS IAM access keysThe exact method has never been 100% confirmed publicly, but all evidence points to: Likely vector: A compromised AWS access key This key allowed the attacker to:Log into the AWS console | The company was shutdown | Yes one single AWS Key can take a company down |
