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Last updated: April 29, 2026
Lambda role credential theft, event source injection, dep vulns, supply chain. Serverless shifts attack surface.
Serverless (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, GCP Cloud Functions, Cloudflare Workers) was marketed as “simpler security” — no OS to patch, no server to harden, shorter attack surface. Reality: the attack surface is different, not simpler. You’re responsible for dependency security, IAM for function execution, input validation for event sources, and secret handling. The platform guarantees are narrower than developers assume.
What serverless doesn’t eliminate
- Dependency vulnerabilities. Your Lambda still imports packages from npm/pip/etc. Vulnerable deps still exploitable.
- IAM misconfigurations. Lambda’s execution role is the function’s identity for cloud access. Over-permissioned role = over-privileged function.
- Event source injection. Lambda triggered by S3 upload, SNS message, API Gateway request. Every event source = potential injection vector.
- Secrets in environment variables or code — readable by anyone with function config access.
- SSRF within function can still reach IMDS (Lambda doesn’t expose IMDS to code by default, but attackers find ways).
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