Exposed Amazon Bedrock AI Gateway Hijacked for Monero Mining

Darktrace reported that attackers compromised a publicly exposed AWS EC2 instance running LiteLLM as an AI gateway to Amazon Bedrock and used it to deploy the XMRig cryptominer. Investigators observed internet-exposed SSH on port 22, repeated short inbound connection attempts, an HTTP download from 185.62.1.8 consistent with malware delivery, and outbound HTTPS traffic to the Monero mining pool pool.hasvault.pro. The host, identified as LiteLLM-Proxy, was later shut down, and Darktrace assessed brute-force or other SSH-based access as a plausible initial intrusion path.

The incident drew attention because the compromised system was not just a compute node but an AI gateway with an instance profile tied to Bedrock resources, potentially exposing API access, IAM permissions, prompts, logs, model outputs, and downstream application workflows. Darktrace warned that such gateways can concentrate access to foundation models, proprietary data, and broader cloud resources, making them attractive targets for credential theft, abuse of AI inference services, persistence in AWS, and lateral movement. The firm recommended limiting IAM privileges, removing internet exposure from management interfaces, using short-lived credentials, segmenting AI infrastructure, and monitoring AI-specific administrative activity.