Ddos 
In the complex world of cloud-native applications, Kubernetes and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) have become the backbone of scalable, containerized infrastructures. But with flexibility comes risk — and Trend Micro’s latest research has uncovered a troubling set of vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to extract AWS credentials directly from within Kubernetes pods.
The report from Trend Micro warns:
“Misconfigured or overly privileged containers in Kubernetes environments can facilitate unauthorized access to sensitive AWS credentials, exposing the environment to privilege escalation and malicious activity.”
At the core of the issue is Amazon EKS Pod Identity, a service designed to streamline AWS credential management for pods. While its intention is to simplify access to services like S3 or DynamoDB, improper configurations can transform convenience into a critical security hole.
One attack scenario described by Trend Micro leverages packet sniffing. Because the eks-pod-identity-agent exposes its credential-fetching API over unencrypted HTTP (169.254.170.23:80), any container with hostNetwork: true can potentially spy on that traffic.
Using standard tools like tcpdump, researchers showed how:
“Credentials are being transmitted in plaintext. Given that AWS credentials are not bound to a specific host, they can be used by a third party to assume elevated privileges.”
This means a rogue pod could simply monitor local traffic and extract powerful AWS credentials — a silent yet critical form of privilege escalation.
Even without raw packet capabilities (CAP_NET_RAW), attackers can still wreak havoc. By manipulating the container’s network interface — possible when CAP_NET_ADMIN is available — a rogue pod could disable the official EKS credential service and spin up its own spoofed version.
A Python-based proof-of-concept built by the researchers used the pyroute2 library to hijack the interface and serve malicious responses.
Trend Micro urges organizations to revisit their container security configurations. Quoting the report:
“Misconfigurations… can expose AWS credentials and create significant risks, including privilege escalation and unauthorized actions within a cloud environment.”
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