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Google Cloud Security Threat Horizons Report #13 (H1 2026) Is Out!

10 March 2026 at 21:02

This is my completely informal, uncertified, unreviewed and otherwise completely unofficial blog inspired by my reading of our next Cloud Threat Horizons Report, #13 (full version, no info to enter!) that we just released (the official blog for #1 report, my unofficial blogs for #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11 and #12).

My favorite quotes from the report follow below:

[in Google Cloud] “software exploitation overtook credentials as the primary initial access vector for the first time.” and “Threat actors exploited third-party software-based entry (44.5%) more frequently than weak credentials.” [A.C. — some of you may say this is because AI is making more zero days, but a dozen more mundane answers may be correct instead]

“While threat actors continued to use brute-force attacks against weak credentials, the increase in RCE represents a pivot toward more automated exploitation of unpatched application-layer vulnerabilities.” [A.C. — to some extent “creds or vulns” debate is rather pointless as the real answer is “both”, and it varies by environment too, see below]
“Threat actors continued to transition from traditional phishing to voice-based social engineering (vishing), and credential harvesting from third-party SaaS tokens to facilitate large-scale, silent data exfiltration.” [A.C. — again, this means “AND” not “OR” because classic phishing still works well in many cases, but yes “credential harvesting from third-party SaaS” has become very fruitful too]
[overall] Still “Identity compromise underpinned 83% of compromises. [A.C. — so, yes, “creds” still beat “vulns” on many environments]

“High-volume data theft operations — executed through compromised but legitimate access channels — remained the primary goal for threat actors, with our metrics showing they targeted data in 73% of cloud-related incidents.” [A.C. — again, not new, but very useful data confirming the running trend. Beware!]
“The window between vulnerability disclosure and mass exploitation collapsed by an order of magnitude, from weeks to days.” [A.C. — again, some of you may see the invisible robot hand of an AI here, but, as usual, the reality is more complicated…]
“Trend analysis from 2008–2025 indicates cloud services will soon surpass email as the primary data exfiltration pathway.” [A.C. — $32B reasons to finally get serious about it across all clouds?]
“45% of intrusions resulted in data theft without immediate extortion attempts at the time of the engagement, and these were often characterized by prolonged dwell times and stealthy persistence.”
“The traditional incident response model is no longer viable when dealing with containerized workloads and serverless architectures where data can vanish in seconds.” [A.C. — a very useful reminder here! Cloud is cloudy! Don’t be that guy who thinks that cloud is a rented colo. Cloud is not JUST somebody else’s computer.]
“Threat actors used large language models (LLM) to automate credential harvesting and transition from a developer’s local environment to full cloud administration access.” [A.C. — this really should not be news for anybody in 2026, but if it is, HERE IS SOME NEWS: BAD GUYS USE AI!]
Thus “Prevent LLM exploitation as an extension of living-off-the-land (LOTL) by treating LLM activity with the same scrutiny as administrative command-line tools.” [A.C. — or, as I say, “with AI agents, every prompt injection is an RCE”]

Now, go and read the CTHR 13 report!

Google Cloud Security Threat Horizons Report #13 (H1 2026) Is Out! was originally published in Anton on Security on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Google Cloud Security Threat Horizons Report #12 Is Out!

Anton on Security

By: Anton Chuvakin

31 July 2025 at 20:57

This is my completely informal, uncertified, unreviewed and otherwise completely unofficial blog inspired by my reading of our next Cloud Threat Horizons Report, #12 (full version) that we just released (the official blog for #1 report, my unofficial blogs for #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10 and #11).

My favorite quotes from the report follow below:

“Google Cloud’s latest research highlights that common hygiene gaps like credential issues and misconfigurations are persistently exploited by threat actors to gain entry into cloud environments. During the first half of 2025, weak or absent credentials were the predominant threat, accounting for 47.1% of incidents. Misconfigurations (29.4%) and API/UI compromises (11.8%) followed as the next most frequently observed initial access vectors.“

“Notably, compared to H2 2024, we observed a 4.9% decrease in misconfiguration-based access and a 5.3% decrease in API/UI compromises (i.e., when an unauthorized entity gains access to, or manipulates a system or data through an application’s user-facing screen or its programmatic connections). This shift appears to be partly absorbed by the rise of leaked credentials representing 2.9% of initial access in H1 2025. ” [A.C. — It gently suggests that while we’re making some progress on configurations, the attackers are moving to where the fruit is even more low-hanging: already leaked credentials.]
“Foundational security remains the strongest defense: Google Cloud research indicates that credential compromise and misconfiguration remain the primary entry points for threat actors into cloud environments, emphasizing the critical need for robust identity and access management and proactive vulnerability management.” [A.C. — it won’t be the magical AI that saves you, it would be not given admin to employees]
“Financially motivated threat groups are increasingly targeting backup systems as part of their primary objective, challenging traditional disaster recovery, and underscoring the need for resilient solutions like Cloud Isolated Recovery Environments (CIRE) to ensure business continuity.” [A.C. — if your key defense against ransomware is still backups, well, we got some “news” got you…]
“Advanced threat actors are leveraging social engineering to steal credentials and session cookies, bypassing MFA to compromise cloud environments for financial theft, often targeting high-value assets.” [A.C. — this is NOT an anti-MFA stance, this is a reminder that MFA helps a whole lot, yet if yours can be bypassed, then its value diminishes]
“Threat actors are increasingly co-opting trusted cloud storage services as a key component in their initial attack chains, deceptively using these platforms to host seemingly benign decoy files, often PDFs.“ and “threat actors used .desktop files to infect systems by downloading decoy PDFs from legitimate cloud storage services from multiple providers, a tactic that deceives victims while additional malicious payloads are downloaded in the background” [A.C. — a nice example of thinking about how the defender will respond by the attacker here]
“more traditional disaster recovery approaches, focused primarily on technical restoration, often fall short in addressing the complexities of recovering from a cyber event, particularly the need to re-establish trust with third parties.” [A.C. — The technical recovery is only half the battle. This speaks to the human element of incident response, and the broader impact of a breach.]

Now, go and read the THR 12 report!

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Google Cloud Security Threat Horizons Report #12 Is Out! was originally published in Anton on Security on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.