42 publicly listable cloud buckets containing 18 billion files, including exposed credentials, database dumps and backups. The Ransomnews research team counted 484,142 publicly listable cloud storage buckets in October 2026, holding 18.05 billion files. They built the count from the search engines that index open cloud storage and published it as the Ransomnews Cloud Exposure Index, written by Mantas Sasnauskas. “No file was opened for this index. Every number below comes from bucket names, file extensions, file counts and last-modified timestamps. That is a deliberate limit. It keeps the research on the right side of the line, and it turns out to be enough to see where the sensitive material concentrates.” Ransomnews states. “We are calling it the Ransomnews Cloud Exposure Index, and we will rerun it quarterly so the numbers can be compared over time.” The researchers used bucket names, file types, file counts and last-modified dates to collect their data. They did not open any files, allowing them to identify where sensitive information might be stored without accessing the content. They plan to repeat the research every three months to track changes over time. Amazon S3 accounts for 72% of the exposed buckets, roughly in line with its share of the market. This does not mean S3 has weaker security than other providers. Azure Blob, however, appears 2.5 to 3.6 times more often than expected among buckets named for backups, data exports and payroll records. The researchers also found 321,058 files related to credentials and keys. Of the exposed .env files, 67% were last modified in 2026. Below is the split by provider, from a snapshot taken on October 7: ProviderOpen bucketsShareAmazon S3347,98471.9%Azure Blob68,53214.2%Google Cloud Storage53,13111.0%DigitalOcean Spaces11,0692.3%Alibaba OSS3,4260.7%Total484,142100% A lot of these buckets are public on purpose, holding website assets, CDN mirrors, open datasets and podcast archives. So the index isn’t 484,142 breaches. It’s the pool where breaches hide, and the rest of the report narrows it down to the stores that should never have been listable. “Azure, by a wide margin relative to its size. Azure Blob holds 14.2% of open buckets, but 37% of the 1,459 buckets with “backup” in the name, 42% of the 399 named for exports, and 51% of the 505 carrying HR or payroll terms.” continues the report. “Buckets named for logs, customers and databases sit at 35% to 36%, all around two and a half times Azure’s baseline.” The skew only shows up for operational data. Buckets named “dev” sit at Azure’s baseline of 15 percent, and “test” and “staging” fall below it, at 9 and 7 percent. The authors suspect Azure storage accounts more often hold line-of-business data such as backups, exports and HR systems that enterprises run on Microsoft, while S3 and Google Cloud carry more application assets. They call it a hypothesis the counts suggest and don’t prove, and it’s the first thing they want to test next time. By sector, retail and e-commerce names lead with 5,666 buckets, mostly storefront assets. The more worrying number is that names tied to regulated sectors (finance, healthcare, education, government, legal and HR) appear on 10,891 unique open buckets. Those are the places where a stray file most likely holds personal, health or financial records, and where regulators expect to hear about it. Sector (by bucket name)Open bucketsFiles in themRetail and e-commerce5,666269.9MFinance and insurance3,50858.0MHealthcare2,70947.9MMedia and entertainment2,696136.2MEducation2,39360.6MGaming2,29679.0MTravel and hospitality1,714118.7MReal estate1,13760.7MGovernment and public sector1,00036.2MLegal97811.3MCrypto63011.9MHR and payroll5058.4M Healthcare-related names appear in 2,709 buckets containing 47.9 million files. The researchers identified them using terms such as “hospital” (135 buckets), “patient” (135), “clinic” (277) and “dental” (331). HR and payroll is the smallest sector, with 505 buckets, 259 of which are hosted on Azure. These figures are based on names, not proof of ownership. The search matches parts of words, so “store” can refer to object storage as well as shops. A single bucket can also appear in two sectors. The exposed buckets also list about 4.7 million database and dump files, 15,130 mailbox archives, and tens of millions of spreadsheets and documents. Credential files are particularly concerning because they can turn a cloud misconfiguration into a real intrusion. File typeWhat it isFiles listed.pemCertificates and private keys113,285.envApp secrets and API keys80,495.p12Certificate bundles with keys33,268.keystoreJava and Android keystores27,229.ppkPuTTY SSH private keys24,302.pfxWindows certificate bundles23,352.ovpnOpenVPN client configs15,079.jksJava keystores2,421.htpasswdWeb server password files695.tfstateTerraform infrastructure state475.kdbxKeePass password vaults457 Each of these exists to grant access. A .env file is where developers keep database passwords and API keys. A .tfstate file is Terraform’s record of a whole cloud setup, often with secrets in plain text, and a .kdbx vault is encrypted but now open to anyone who wants to guess passwords offline. Some .pem files are public certificates and some files are test fixtures, so the counts are a ceiling on live secrets and not a measure of them. It’s still a big ceiling. Database files make up most of the sensitive material by volume: File typeWhat it usually holdsFiles listed.sqliteEmbedded app databases2,561,807.bakDatabase and server backups752,055.sqlDatabase dumps687,446.sqlite3Embedded app databases488,176.dumpDatabase dumps176,603.mdb / .accdbMicrosoft Access databases36,467.dmpMemory and crash dumps12,809.pst / .ost / .mboxMailbox archives15,130.emlSaved emails4,549,665.csvData exports and recordsat least 69,580,112.xlsx / .xlsSpreadsheets42,544,997.docxWord documents24,936,788.pdfDocuments, invoices, scansat least 106,191,393.logApplication and server logsat least 61,310,809 The exposed buckets contain thousands of virtual disk images, including VMware, Hyper-V and QEMU files. A single disk image can contain an entire server, including credentials. Some exposures involve active systems. Of 80,495 .env files, 67% were last modified in 2026. Certificates and SQLite databases include both recent and older files. Backups appear older, with 89% of the 752,055 .bak files last modified before 2025. Almost all PuTTY key files date from 2024. Recent leaks need urgent attention, while long-standing exposures point to poor security management. The problem is ongoing: at least 113.6 million files were added to publicly listable buckets in the seven days before September 9. Over the previous 30 days, these included more than 21,000 SQL dumps, nearly 21,000 backup files, 4,477 .pem files and 1,298 .env files. Public .env files can expose database passwords that ransomware affiliates and initial access brokers look for. Similar credentials appear in stolen-data logs, but in this case, attackers do not need to infect a device. They only need to search for exposed files. Cloud providers already offer settings to prevent public access. Organizations should enable S3 Block Public Access, disable anonymous access to Azure Blob storage, and enable public access prevention in Google Cloud. These controls should apply at account or organization level to prevent new storage buckets from becoming public. Organizations should also scan their storage for sensitive files such as .env, .sql, .bak, .pem, .ppk, .tfstate and .kdbx. Terraform state files and virtual disk images should be treated as secrets, stored privately, encrypted and monitored. Backups should never be publicly accessible, and recovery procedures must be tested. One exposed bucket may be a mistake, but many often indicate a wider process failure. Organizations need to fix the underlying security controls, not just individual buckets. The research has some limitations. The team queried search engines on October 25, while the bucket list was current to October 7 and the newest indexed file dated September 9. File-level data may therefore be about a month old. Counts are also capped at one million per query, so researchers split larger categories into date ranges and added the results. Some limits apply. The team queried the search engines on October 25. The bucket list was current to October 7 and the newest indexed file was dated September 9, so file-level figures lag by about a month. The index caps any single count at one million, so larger types were split into date windows and summed. A last-modified date shows when a file was written, not when it was exposed, and a listed file isn’t proof that its contents can be read. No bucket is named in the report. Exposures with a known owner in regulated sectors are going through responsible disclosure, with national CERTs copied where the owner is public sector or doesn’t respond. “Rotate any secret that has ever sat in a public bucket. Closing the bucket does not un-leak the key. Assume anything that was listable was copied.” conlcudes the report. Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon Pierluigi Paganini (SecurityAffairs – hacking, Cloud Buckets)
Microsoft again asked Entra ID administrators to migrate users to phishing-resistant methods to avoid sign-in disruptions before it retires SMS and voice authentication in February 2027. This retirement process applies only to Microsoft Entra ID workforce tenant authentication scenarios and not to Azure AD B2C or Microsoft Entra External ID customer identity scenarios. Before Microsoft retires SMS and voice authentication, admins should ensure all users in their organizations use a phishing-resistant method, since they will no longer be able to use them to complete multifactor authentication and log in to their accounts. Admins can choose from passkeys, QR code authentication, FIDO2 security keys, and other Entra ID-supported sign-in methods. "Microsoft-provided SMS and voice authentication will retire starting February 1, 2027. Complete your migration before rollout begins to avoid interrupting users' sign-in experience," Microsoft said in a Microsoft 365 Message Center update on Tuesday.
PHP2Shell shows how quickly attackers can exploit critical vulnerabilities, often before organizations have time to patch. Token Security explains why limiting the access of service accounts, API keys, and AI agents is just as important as fixing vulnerabilities to reduce the damage from a breach.
Modern phishing campaigns can compromise American businesses without relying on traditional credential theft. Attackers can abuse legitimate cloud services, authentication mechanisms, and trusted business workflows to gain access to corporate accounts while leaving fewer obvious signs behind. ANY.RUN's analysis of Skyw4lker, a device code phishing campaign primarily targeting U.S. organizations
A credit card skimming group reportedly compromised a shared analytics script used by e-commerce platform Convertr to steal shoppers’ payment data during checkout. The campaign was identified on October 24 and has been attributed to a Brazilian gang, active since at least July 2024, that focuses on infecting online stores running Magento, OpenCart, and WooCommerce platforms. Convertr is a Brazilian e-commerce platform that powers online stores and checkout systems for dozens of major fashion brands in the country, handling R$2 billion ($370M) in sales. E-commerce security firm Sansec says that the attacker modified the Plausible tracker file hosted on a self-managed server operated by Convertr. Ecommerce cybersecurity company Sansec says that the attacker modified the tracker file on a self-hosted server for Plausible, an open source alternative to Google Analytics, managed by Convertr.
French energy giant ENGIE, one of the world's largest power and natural gas providers, confirmed that attackers stole customer data after breaching a marketing platform used by business partners. ENGIE operates in renewable energy, infrastructure, and customer energy supply in 30 countries, employs over 90,000 people, and reported €71.9 billion in revenue last year. An ENGIE spokesperson told BleepingComputer that it cut off the attackers' access to the compromised platform and that they didn't breach the company's internal systems. "ENGIE's internal IT systems were not compromised. ENGIE recently identified unusual data access activity within a tool used by partners as part of their customer prospecting activities and the marketing of energy offers," the spokesperson said. The ENGIE spokesperson didn't say how many customers were affected, but told BleepingComputer the incident is limited to customers in France.
The University of Copenhagen in Denmark confirmed that hackers accessed one of its test environments containing personal data belonging to 525,000 people. The educational organization detected the breach last Tuesday and disclosed it on Friday. In an update yesterday, the university added another 20,000 staff and students whose PIN codes were exposed. “The University of Copenhagen has confirmed a cyber attack in which hackers gained access to one of the university’s test environments,” the university says. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is Denmark’s oldest university and one of its leading research institutions. It has approximately 36,800 students and 10,700 employees, with six faculties and more than 200 research centers. The University of Copenhagen is still investigating to determine the extent of the incident, but warns that the following information may have been exposed:
OpenAI has launched GPT-6.1 Terra, a new model focused on computer use, visual reasoning, coding, and everyday work, while costing significantly less than its larger models. Terra is designed as a faster and cheaper option for tasks such as filling out forms, editing videos, interpreting technical drawings, and automating repetitive desktop work. "We’re introducing GPT-6.1 Terra, a fast, efficient model that combines detailed visual reasoning and precise computer use alongside clearer, more natural writing," OpenAI explained in a blog post. "A significant step up from GPT-5.6 Terra, it excels at the communication and computer-based tasks that fill the workday, from drafting proposals and interpreting technical drawings to filling out forms and editing videos." OpenAI says GPT-6.1 Terra's API pricing is 50% lower than GPT-5.6 Terra and GPT-6.1 Sol, at $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens.
Author: Len Noe, Solutions Architect, BeyondTrust The first question on any incident bridge isn’t about why it happened--it’s whose credentials were used. In my experience, whoever can answer that credential question in the first hour sets the pace for everything after it: what to isolate, what to revoke, whom to notify, and how far the damage could have spread. The teams that can’t answer it spend the first day reconstructing their answer from logs that were never designed to provide it. That discipline is about to be tested by a new kind of actor. On October 16, 2026, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the National Security Agency (NSA) jointly published ten voluntary practices for incident readiness and response when AI agents act in ways nobody directed.
An automated campaign is using stolen GitHub tokens to plant workflows that print a repository's secrets into its GitHub Actions logs, which the attackers then download before deleting the runs. The attacks have succeeded in private repositories and GitHub Enterprise environments, according to an analysis by cloud security company Wiz. A GitHub safeguard that pauses
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