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How to Find Publicly Accessible AWS RDS Instances

Publicly accessible databases could expose sensitive data to bad actors.

info

This security check is part of the CIS Amazon Web Services Benchmarks and is rated severity critical.

Prerequisites​

This guide assumes that you have already installed and configured Fix Inventory to collect your AWS resources.

Directions​

  1. Execute the following search command in Fix Inventory Shell:

    > search is(aws_rds_instance) and db_publicly_accessible==true
    ​kind=aws_rds_instance, ..., region=fixinventory-poweruser
    ​kind=aws_rds_instance, ..., account=poweruser-team

  2. Pipe the search command into the dump command:

    > search is(aws_rds_instance) and db_publicly_accessible==true | dump
    ​reported:
    ​  id: /aws/rds/123
    ​  name: some-name
    ​  ctime: '2022-12-05T22:53:14Z'
    ​  kind: aws_rds_instance
    ​  age: 2mo28d

    The command output will list the details of all non-compliant aws_rds_instance resources.

Remediation​

  • Do not allow public access.
note

Please refer to the AWS RDS documentation for details.

Further Reading​