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What is the dumbest AWS security mistake you've actually found in the wild?

Not the theoretical stuff from a security checklist.

I mean the kind of thing where you look at an AWS account and think:

I'm building an open-source AWS security scanner and I've started realizing that the interesting part isn't just how many checks a scanner has.

It's whether those checks actually catch the weird stuff people accidentally leave behind.

For example, one of the first real accounts someone tested my scanner against had a forgotten access key that nobody realized was still there.

That got me thinking:

What are the security mistakes that AWS developers actually make repeatedly, but security tools don't make obvious enough?

Could be:

  • forgotten IAM users/keys
  • overly permissive security groups
  • weird cross-account trust policies
  • unused privileges
  • public resources
  • logging gaps
  • something completely different

I'm collecting real examples because I want to turn them into better test cases for Plexavo.

What's the most ridiculous AWS security/configuration mistake you've personally encountered?

Bonus points if it's something a scanner would normally miss.

submitted by /u/kavee-core141 to r/devops
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