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18 posts tagged with "Security"

Security-related changes

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Template Engine Upgrade Drops the End-of-Life AWS SDK from Atmos

· 9 min read
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

Most security findings are fixed with a patch or minor release of the affected dependency. Some need a major version upgrade instead: when a dependency's major release line stops being maintained, its CVEs stay open forever, and every project that pulls it in inherits them. That is where Atmos was: the template engine it embeds, Gomplate, had moved on from the release line Atmos used, and that line depended on the AWS SDK for Go v1, which has reached end of support and carries CVEs no v1 release will ever fix. Atmos never executed the affected code, but no patch or minor release could clear the findings. The CVEs forced our hand: the template engine now runs on Gomplate v5, two major versions ahead, and the end-of-life SDK is gone from the Atmos build entirely.

Identity-Authenticated Vault Secret Fields

· 2 min read
Noel Jackson
Community Contributor

Structured secrets rarely agree on a single field name, and an ambient Vault token can silently cross an authentication boundary. That combination forces teams to reshape secret documents or wrap Atmos just to pass one short-lived credential into another identity.

Release engineering as tested software

· 3 min read
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

We published incorrect artifacts in the 1.233.0 and 1.233.1 releases.

Release engineering controls versions, builds, signatures, provenance, and distribution. Application tests alone do not prove that this process publishes the correct release.

We test the release process in CI alongside Atmos. Tests check release rules, artifact verification, and publication without real releases.

Activate a PIM-eligible Azure role as part of your identity chain

· 4 min read
Andriy Knysh
Principal Architect @ Cloud Posse

More and more Azure resource roles are handed out as PIM-eligible rather than standing: you hold the role only after you activate it, for a time-boxed window, with a justification. That activation is a multi-step REST dance against Azure Resource Manager - enumerate what you are eligible for, file a self-activation request, then poll until it provisions - and there is no native az command for activating an eligible Azure resource role. So every working session starts with hand-rolled az rest calls or a third-party script before you can actually run anything.

Atmos binaries now build with Go's FIPS 140-3 crypto module by default

· 3 min read
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

Federal agencies, financial institutions, and healthcare organizations are often required to run only cryptography that's been validated against FIPS 140, the U.S. government's standard for approved algorithms and key sizes. For a command-line tool built on a general-purpose language runtime, meeting that bar has traditionally meant compiling against a separate validated crypto library, or simply hoping the runtime's own TLS and encryption code happens to stick to approved algorithms.

atmos git clone Refuses Unsafe Fork Checkouts by Default

· 2 min read
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

atmos git clone is Atmos's native replacement for actions/checkout. Mirroring the actions/checkout v7 hardening, it now refuses by default to clone untrusted fork content under the elevated pull_request_target and workflow_run events — the classic "pwn request" where fork code would run with your repository's secrets. A grep-able opt-in is available for the rare case you genuinely need it.

AWS Security Findings Now Export to SARIF and OCSF

· 3 min read
Erik Osterman
Founder @ Cloud Posse

The atmos aws security analyze command is the native Atmos command for turning AWS security findings into infrastructure-aware remediation guidance. It reads findings from AWS Security Hub and Amazon Inspector, including Security Hub product findings from services such as AWS Config, GuardDuty, Macie, and IAM Access Analyzer, then uses Atmos component tags and mapping heuristics to connect affected resources back to the stacks and components that manage them.

Those mappings make findings more actionable: instead of stopping at an AWS resource ARN, Atmos can show the owning stack, component path, severity, source service, and remediation context. With new SARIF 2.1.0 and OCSF 1.4.0 output, those findings can now flow into code scanning, SIEM, governance, risk, and compliance workflows without a translation layer.

Introducing atmos auth shell: Isolated Shell Sessions for Secure Multi-Identity Workflows

· 7 min read
Andriy Knysh
Principal Architect @ Cloud Posse

We're excited to introduce atmos auth shell, a new command that makes working with multiple cloud identities more secure.

This command launches isolated shell sessions scoped to specific cloud identities. Think of it like aws-vault exec, but for all your cloud identities managed by Atmos—AWS, Azure, GCP, GitHub, SAML, and more.

When you exit the shell, you return to your parent shell where those credentials were never present. It's a simple pattern that helps prevent credential leakage and reduces the risk of running commands against the wrong environment.