AWS Lambda MicroVMs Offer Isolated Sandboxes for Running Untrusted Code Safely

AWS has released Lambda MicroVMs, Firecracker-based virtual machines designed to safely execute untrusted code in hardware-isolated sandboxes that boot in roughly one second. A developer built a multi-tenant pipeline where users upload CSV files and custom Python transformation functions, both treated as untrusted inputs requiring different security approaches. Uploaded files are scanned for malware using GuardDuty, while code is contained within MicroVMs rather than scanned, since legitimate-looking code can still be destructive. Each sandbox runs with a sealed VPC network blocking all outbound internet traffic, a least-privilege IAM role limited to writing logs, strict memory and timeout limits, and per-tenant S3 Access Points to prevent cross-tenant data access. Testing confirmed that runaway memory usage, infinite loops, and malicious file uploads were each caught by their respective layers before reaching clean storage.
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