How an empty S3 bucket can make your AWS bill explode | My $1,300 AWS Bill When Free Tier Backfires

The Curious Case of the Exploding AWS Bill: A Software Engineer's Comedy of Errors
00:00 The Empty Bucket Trap - My $1,300 AWS Nightmare
00:34 Ghost in the Machine - Unmasking the Mystery Requests
01:27 Pay to Play - The Shocking Truth About Unauthorized Access
02:26 Data Breach Disaster - My Bucket Became a Public Toilet
03:10 Lessons from the Cloud - How to Avoid My Costly Mistakes
03:42 Aftermath - Did AWS Fix the Problem?
04:25 Conclusion
"My $1,300 AWS Bill: When Free Tier Backfires Hilariously"
"How I Accidentally Became the Cloud's Data Dumpster"
"S3 Bucket Nightmare: 100 Million Requests & a Comedy of Errors"
"AWS Billing Shock: Confessions of an Accidental Data Hoarder"
"Don't Let Your S3 Bucket Turn into a Public Toilet (A Cautionary Tale)"
"Open-Source Oops: How a Tiny Mistake Led to a Gigantic AWS Bill"
"The Day My AWS Bill Exploded (And Other Software Engineer Fails)"
"The Hidden Danger of Empty S3 Buckets"
"Unveiling the Mystery of My $1,300 AWS Bill"
"S3 Security: Lessons Learned from a Costly Mistake"
"How a Misconfigured Tool Exposed Sensitive Data (And My Wallet)"
"The Shocking Truth About Unauthorized S3 Requests"
"AWS Billing: Avoiding Unexpected Charges & Data Leaks"
"My Journey into the Dark Side of S3 Buckets"
"This Common Mistake Cost Me $1,300 on AWS! (Don't Be Like Me)"
"You Won't Believe What Happened When I Created an S3 Bucket..."
"The Secret to Protecting Your AWS Bill (And Your Data)"
"I Exposed a Major Security Flaw in Popular Open-Source Software"
"AWS Tried to Charge Me $1,300 for THIS?!"
"AWS S3 | Billing Shock | Security Risk | Open-Source Software"
"S3 Bucket | Data Leak | Unauthorized Access | CloudTrail"
"AWS Costs | Free Tier | Cost Optimization | Cloud Security"
"Software Engineering | Cloud Computing | Mistakes to Avoid"
Our protagonist, Maciej, a seasoned software engineer, embarked on a seemingly innocent journey – building a document indexing system. He created a humble S3 bucket in the eu-west-1 region, the digital equivalent of renting a small storage unit in Ireland. He uploaded some files for testing, feeling confident he was well within the free tier limits, like a shopper carefully calculating the cost of groceries to avoid exceeding their budget.
Two days later, the AWS billing page delivered a punchline worthy of a dark comedy. Maciej's bill was a staggering $1,300, with the culprit being nearly 100,000,000 S3 PUT requests within a single day! It was like returning to your storage unit to find it filled with 100 million bricks, each with a hefty invoice attached.
"Where did all these requests come from?" Maciej wondered, bewildered. AWS, by default, doesn't log requests made to S3 buckets, keeping its secrets like a tight-lipped librarian. But fear not, for CloudTrail and S3 Server Access Logging exist, like trusty detectives ready to crack the case.
Enabling CloudTrail logs, Maciej discovered a horde of write requests from various accounts, some even from outside AWS. It was like finding footprints of not just one, but a whole troop of mysterious intruders in his storage unit.
"Was this some DDoS attack?" he pondered, imagining digital villains bombarding his bucket with malicious intent. However, the truth was far more bizarre. An open-source tool, whose name remains a secret to protect the innocent (and the data), had a default configuration setting its backup location to... you guessed it, Maciej's S3 bucket! Every deployment of this tool was like a well-meaning but clueless delivery person, mistakenly dropping off packages at his doorstep.
"But why should I pay for their mistake?" Maciej rightfully questioned. As it turns out, S3 charges for unauthorized requests too. It's like getting a bill for all the misdelivered packages, even though you never ordered them! Even a simple command like 'aws s3 cp ./file.txt s3://your-bucket-name/random_key' would result in an AccessDenied error for the sender, but a charge for our unfortunate protagonist.
The plot thickened when over half the bill came from the us-east-1 region, where Maciej had no bucket! The answer? S3 requests without a specified region default to us-east-1 and are then redirected. It's like the delivery person going to the wrong address, realizing their mistake, and then charging you extra for the detour.
Now, here's where the story takes a hilarious turn. Maciej thought, "If all these systems are trying to back up their data here, why not let them?" He opened his bucket for public writes and within 30 seconds, collected over 10GB of data! It was like opening his door to find a mountain of misdelivered packages, each containing a piece of someone else's life. Of course, he couldn't disclose the contents, but it highlighted the potential for a data leak of epic proportions.