By LordofHeaven

“Not all vulnerabilities need payloads.
Some just need silence, patience… and one misconfigured bucket.”

I wasn’t looking for an RCE.
No injection.
No login bypass.

This time, I wanted something that made zero noise but maximum impact ( Simplest method for information disclosure )

And what I found?
Was far bigger than I expected.

I targeted a government website. It was in-scope under their public VDP, so I was well within legal grounds.

Instead of poking endpoints or fuzzing parameters, I went for the quiet kill:

“Let’s find out if they store anything in cloud buckets… S3 maybe?”

I launched my private recon tool — not public (yet).

But here’s what I can say:

• ✅ Written in Python
• ✅ Fully parallel, multi-threaded
• ✅ Scans 5K–7K subdomains per minute
• ✅ Pure speed, pure stealth

I pointed it at the target domain — around 40K subdomains in total.

And then…

I hit Enter.

Out of nowhere — 5 S3 buckets popped up.

Most returned 403s.
But one… didn’t.

aws s3 ls s3://files.redacted.com/ --no-sign-request

It responded. With everything.

Over 1 million files in the open.
No auth. No logging. No alert.

I was holding the keys to a vault… and it was already wide open.

I picked a random directory.
Downloaded one ZIP.

Inside?

📄 .mdb Microsoft Access DBs
📊 .xlsx internal paperwork
💾 .sql production database dumps
🗂️ Scanned contracts, memos, draft letters

All live, all production, all real.

I didn’t even scrape 2% — but it was clear.

50–60GB+ of raw government data was lying public on S3.

They replied to my VDP report:

“Can you prove this bucket belongs to us?”

Easy.

I told them to search s3.amazonaws.com in their homepage source code.
And there it was. Linked in public HTML and JS.

They confirmed it. The fix came fast.
They promised an LoA (Letter of Appreciation).

I moved to another government domain in scope.

Launched the same tool.

This time?

Three buckets were not just open. They were writable.

aws s3 cp hello.txt s3://bucket1/ --no-sign-request

Success.

aws s3 rm s3://bucket1/hello.txt/ --no-sign-request

Deleted. No resistance.

Full read/write/delete access.

At this point, I had access to everything.
Files could be overwritten, deleted, or replaced with malicious content.

But I didn’t.

I uploaded a test hello.txt file.
Then removed it cleanly.

“This is the edge,” I told myself.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

In the wrong hands, this could’ve ended badly:

• Government files replaced with malware
• Backups deleted silently
• SQL dumps leaked to dark markets
• Defacements, ransomware drops, or persistence backdoors

And the worst part?

Zero logging. No alert. No one would’ve known.

Don’t just stick to S3 — explore other storage options ethically.

gsutil ls gs://<bucket-name>/

aws --endpoint-url https://<region>.digitaloceanspaces.com s3 ls s3://<space-name> --no-sign-request

Simple tools. Massive results.

Till that checkout my other tool

This wasn’t a fluke.
It was a systematic recon approach using my private tool.

If this post crosses 150+ claps, I’ll consider open-sourcing it.

Fast. Parallel. Cloud-hunting.
Built for bounty hunters.
Stay tuned.

I never downloaded more than needed. Never misused access.
I walked in. Took proof. Walked out.

But here’s what this story really teaches:

“Sometimes the biggest vulnerabilities aren’t behind a login page.
They’re just… floating in the cloud, waiting to be found.”