AI agents are being developed to emulate the reasoning patterns of cloud security experts, enabling them to identify and exploit privilege escalation vulnerabilities in AWS environments. These agents can not only detect complex attack vectors, which traditional tools often miss, but also automate the execution of these attacks, raising ethical concerns about sharing methodologies that could also benefit malicious actors. The future of cloud security may see a shift towards continuous autonomous threat emulation, challenging the current landscape of cyber defense.

Google has addressed a privilege escalation vulnerability in Cloud Composer 2, which could have allowed attackers with edit permissions to exploit the default Cloud Build service account. The fix, implemented in December 2024, ensures that environments use their service accounts for package installations, thereby enhancing security. No evidence of exploitation has been reported.

The article discusses a method for escalating privileges in a cloud-native environment by manipulating an administrator's PowerShell profile after gaining OneDrive permissions. The process involves uploading a backdoor script to the admin's OneDrive, which executes when they launch PowerShell, allowing attackers to harvest sensitive tokens and potentially gain further access to the system.