European Commission Investigating Breach After Amazon Cloud Account Hack

European Commission's AWS Environment Breached - 350GB Allegedly Gone

The European Commission - the executive engine of the EU - is deep in incident response mode after a threat actor punched through at least one of its AWS (Amazon Web Services) accounts. The attacker claims to have walked off with over 350 GB of data, including databases and access to an internal email server used by Commission staff.

AWS confirmed to BleepingComputer that no failure occurred on their side - their services "operated as designed." That means this wasn't a cloud provider failure. Someone got in through the tenant's own configuration, credentials, or access controls.

What We Know So Far

• A threat actor gained unauthorized access to at least one AWS account belonging to the European Commission
• Over 350 GB of data allegedly stolen - including databases and employee-related information
• Screenshots provided to BleepingComputer show access to Commission employee data and an email server
• The attacker claims no extortion intent - they plan to leak the data publicly instead
• The Commission's cybersecurity incident response team detected the breach quickly and is investigating
• The breach method has not been publicly disclosed

This follows a February disclosure by the Commission after a January breach of their mobile device management platform - linked to Ivanti EPMM code-injection vulnerabilities also targeting Dutch and Finnish government bodies.

How Attackers Get Into Your Cloud Accounts

Cloud breaches rarely mean the cloud provider failed. They mean someone got hold of valid credentials, exploited a misconfigured service, or abused over-permissioned IAM roles. Common entry points include:

• Leaked or phished AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY pairs
• Overly permissive IAM policies - roles with * on * are ticking time bombs
• Publicly exposed S3 buckets or unsecured API gateways
• Misconfigured EC2 metadata endpoints used to steal instance credentials
• Third-party integrations with excessive permissions

What Developers Should Do Right Now

Lock down your cloud posture before someone else does it for you:

• Rotate credentials regularly - treat access keys like passwords, never commit them to repos
• Enforce least privilege - every IAM role should have only what it absolutely needs
• Enable CloudTrail and GuardDuty - you need visibility before you can respond
• Use MFA on all AWS root and IAM accounts - no exceptions
• Audit third-party integrations - revoke anything that hasn't been used in 30 days
• Scan your web-facing apps - API endpoints and web interfaces are common first-step entry points into broader cloud environments

The Commission's breach is a high-profile reminder that cloud security is a shared responsibility - and the tenant-side controls matter just as much as the provider's infrastructure.

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