Cloud security experts warn of risks in IAM policy wildcards and misconfigurations

Security guidance for cloud platforms highlights that a single wildcard in an Identity and Access Management policy can create excessive and dangerous permissions. Experts advise administrators to thoroughly review the principal, action, resource, and condition elements of any policy, not just scan for asterisks. Specific dangerous combinations, such as broad compute permissions alongside IAM role-passing abilities, can create paths for privilege escalation. The article recommends using tools like Access Analyzer to find unused permissions, regularly auditing policies, and treating all policy changes as high-risk operations requiring review.