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CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on GitHub

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Re: CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on GitHub

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which DOGE employee put this file on GitHub?

The one who fired the team that prevented this sort of thing.

I really hope they didn't also fire the "don't shit your pants" team or that office is going to smell really bad.

Re: CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on GitHub

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOGE. It's DOGE. This is just things going according to plan for people that think the US government is too powerful or that there is a fortune to be made in stealing public sector resources and privatizing them. It is a bad plan that has and will continue to harm people, but it is intentional.

Which DOGE employee put this file on GitHub?

"I didn't create the epidemic, I just fired all the doctors and dissolved the medical schools"

Security doesn't happen by magic. It is enforced by process, maintained by people and systems built and run by people. Furthermore, when people are under stress and underresourced, they make more mistakes. This was inevitable given the budget cuts.

You can't fire everyone at AWS and say one intern will support it, and say that it is a profitable and sustainable restructuring. Any fool can see that will fail, so if it were actually implemented by someone who is not a fool, you can conclude it is intentional.

Re: CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on GitHub

#84
post #26

> Valadon said he reached out because the owner in this case wasn’t responding and the information exposed was highly sensitive. obviously leaking the credentials itself is crazy, given that its (a contractor to) CISA, but to not respond when notified? crazy crazy. but wait! it gets worse somehow " “AWS-Workspace-Firefox-Passwords.csv” — listed plaintext usernames and passwords for dozens of internal CISA systems " w…

One the one hand the CISA is being gutted, and on the other hand there is an ever increase of rhetoric about cybersecurity, national interests, critical infrastructure..

That's why we don't listen to rhetoric.

Re: CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on GitHub

#85
I'm surprised that this has apparently been ongoing for 6-7 months. I thought outfits like GitGuardian, or solo researchers with trufflehog (etc) would find leaked keys in days, not months. Maybe this is related to the major growth of github? The scanners can't keep up?

Re: CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on GitHub

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that it should not have happened, at the same time its probably true that most people are never formally trained on security. The real story here is a big gap in existing implementations where shared credentials are needed and used pretty much across all the systems but there are no good solutions for managing such use cases. People are naturally more sensitive about their personal secrets than somethin…

The real story here is a big gap in existing implementations where shared credentials are needed and used pretty much across all the systems but there are no good solutions for managing such use cases. This strikes me as so wrong, I wonder if I’m misreading your comment. For instance, team password managers are a thing. And IT teams at many large corporations are not passing around an unsecured CSV files full of pass…

You are right... Most use Excel files ...

Re: CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on GitHub

#87

> Valadon said he reached out because the owner in this case wasn’t responding and the information exposed was highly sensitive. obviously leaking the credentials itself is crazy, given that its (a contractor to) CISA, but to not respond when notified? crazy crazy. but wait! it gets worse somehow " “AWS-Workspace-Firefox-Passwords.csv” — listed plaintext usernames and passwords for dozens of internal CISA systems " w…

Most of the folks I know who were with CISA were purged with the January-March 2025 Doge campaign. 0 notice "we 20 year olds dont understand what you do so fired". A group was working on Diebold voting insecurity, and foreign implant hacking. Gone.

> ...A group was working on Diebold voting insecurity, and foreign implant hacking. Gone...

The conspiracy theorist in me from years ago would have stated that maybe this action from DOGE was purposeful...but, nowadays, i see lots more incompetence that merely might present/display as conspiracy! lol :-D

Re: CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on GitHub

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree that it should not have happened, at the same time its probably true that most people are never formally trained on security. The real story here is a big gap in existing implementations where shared credentials are needed and used pretty much across all the systems but there are no good solutions for managing such use cases. People are naturally more sensitive about their personal secrets than somethin…

The real story here is a big gap in existing implementations where shared credentials are needed and used pretty much across all the systems but there are no good solutions for managing such use cases. This strikes me as so wrong, I wonder if I’m misreading your comment. For instance, team password managers are a thing. And IT teams at many large corporations are not passing around an unsecured CSV files full of pass…

Lets take a concrete example, suppose you have AWS root account credentials. Are you going to assign them to one individual identity or as a company you would keep them accessible to a group of admins. Its going to be the second choice almost for every big company which makes them shared credentials.

Coming to team password managers at high level, its a shared location guarded behind closed doors (probably encryption at transit and rest). They would be another set of software that every company specially small business or contractors may not be incentivized to pay for. Some one in their naivety considered Github as a safe enough place, assuming that the access is guarded which turned out to be wrong and exposed this thing.

Lastly IT teams in large corporations being secure is a myth for most part. Your root keys for the most popular CA providers were shared in plain text emails not so long ago.

Re: CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on GitHub

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which DOGE employee put this file on GitHub?

"I didn't create the epidemic, I just fired all the doctors and dissolved the medical schools" Security doesn't happen by magic. It is enforced by process, maintained by people and systems built and run by people. Furthermore, when people are under stress and underresourced, they make more mistakes. This was inevitable given the budget cuts. You can't fire everyone at AWS and say one intern will support it, and say t…

The analogy to not posting secrets to the public isn't medical schools and doctors, it's a sign in the bathroom that says "employees must wash hands".

Re: CISA Admin Leaked AWS GovCloud Keys on GitHub

#90

> Valadon said he reached out because the owner in this case wasn’t responding and the information exposed was highly sensitive. obviously leaking the credentials itself is crazy, given that its (a contractor to) CISA, but to not respond when notified? crazy crazy. but wait! it gets worse somehow " “AWS-Workspace-Firefox-Passwords.csv” — listed plaintext usernames and passwords for dozens of internal CISA systems " w…

DOGE. It's DOGE. This is just things going according to plan for people that think the US government is too powerful or that there is a fortune to be made in stealing public sector resources and privatizing them. It is a bad plan that has and will continue to harm people, but it is intentional.

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