Cloud Security Demo article

Cloud Permissions Grow Sideways, Not Up

6 min read DarkLayer Security Research

When teams review cloud permissions, they look for the obvious over-grants: a wildcard policy, a public bucket, an admin role. Those are real, but the paths that surprise organizations are usually composed rather than granted.

A CI role that can pass one specific role. That role which can update one function. That function with one environment variable. Individually each step is defensible; composed they reach production.

This is why permission review by listing policies is insufficient. The useful question is reachability: starting from the least-trusted identity in the system, what can it arrive at through the trust relationships that exist?

Assessment work that models these chains changes the remediation conversation. Teams stop debating individual wildcard statements and start cutting the paths — which is where the actual risk reduction happens.

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