Ensuring that EBS snapshots are not publicly accessible is an important security best practice to protect sensitive data stored in AWS. EBS snapshots can contain sensitive information such as user data, configuration files, and database contents, and therefore should only be accessible to authorized personnel. By default, EBS snapshots are only accessible to the AWS account that created them. However, it's possible to accidentally or intentionally make them publicly accessible, which can lead to unauthorized access and data breaches. This misconfiguration can happen due to incorrect AWS resource policies or misconfigured IAM roles and permissions.
To remediate the issue of EBS snapshots being publicly accessible, the following steps can be taken:
- Identify all EBS snapshots that are publicly accessible.
- Remove public access from the identified EBS snapshots.
- Check for any other EBS snapshots that may have public access and repeat step 2.
- Implement controls to prevent future EBS snapshots from being made publicly accessible, such as:
- a. Applying resource policies to restrict snapshot access to specific AWS accounts, IAM roles or VPCs.
- b. Configuring EBS snapshot sharing with trusted accounts only.
- c. Limiting access to AWS API actions that allow sharing of EBS snapshots.
- d. Enforcing strong IAM policies for users with access to EBS snapshots.
- Monitor EBS snapshot access and permissions regularly to ensure compliance with security policies.
Note: Remediation steps provided by Lightlytics are meant to be suggestions and guidelines only. It is crucial to thoroughly verify and test any remediation steps before applying them to production environments. Each organization's infrastructure and security needs may differ, and blindly applying suggested remediation steps without proper testing could potentially cause unforeseen issues or vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you validate and customize any remediation steps to meet your organization's specific requirements and ensure that they align with your security policies and best practices.
