Ransomnews finds 484,142 exposed cloud buckets holding 18 billion files

Ransomnews counted 484,142 publicly listable cloud storage buckets holding 18.05 billion files in October 2026, including database dumps, backups and credentials. Amazon S3 accounts for 72% of the buckets, but Azure Blob appears 2.5 to 3.6 times more often than expected among buckets named for backups, exports and payroll records.

• 321,058 files in exposed buckets relate to credentials and keys
• 67% of 80,495 .env files were last modified in 2026
• Azure Blob holds 14.2% of buckets but 51% of HR-named ones
• 113.6 million files were added to public buckets in the week before September 9