Top all-time · #2147
cloudonaut
Company blog · cloudonaut.ioprogrammingsystems
cloudonaut is the company blog at cloudonaut.io, writing about programming and systems. Since 2015, 35 different Hacker News readers have linked it 195 times, most often “AWS SSM is a trojan horse: fix it now”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (10) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Cloudonaut posts cover AWS topics such as EC2 access through Systems Manager, IAM policy tooling, SQS and Lambda, Fargate versus App Runner, and certification advice. HN readers link them as AWS references.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 10 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
All you need to know to build a highly available, scalable and cost efficient cloud infrastructure based on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Most-linked posts?
- AWS SSM is a trojan horse: fix it now5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2019-06-11
- AWS Security Primer4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-05-11
- Burst credits of t2 EC2 instances need monitoring4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2018-03-13
- Serverless chatbot lessons learned4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2017-06-30
- Updated: EC2 Network Performance Cheat Sheet3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-01-09
- Integrate SQS and Lambda: serverless architecture for asynchronous workloads3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-05-23
- ECS vs. Kubernets: same same but different3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2017-06-20
- Designing asynchronous event systems with AWS IoT and SAM2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-12-05
- Using a single AWS account is a serious risk2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-08-07
- Your Lambda function might execute twice. Deal with it2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-11-10
What Hacker News says?
In case you are using AWS, I learned that you can close port 22 on your EC2 instances, and connect trough the Systems Manager (SSM): https://cloudonaut.io/connect-to-your-ec2-instance-using-ssh...
Comment linking /connect-to-your-ec2-instance-using-ssh-the-modern-way/
on “I looked through attacks in my access logs”Submitted AWS mistakes to avoid as a story · 537 points
HN discussionOh and by the way it was actually your https://cloudonaut.io/your-single-aws-account-is-a-serious-r... post that indirectly inspired this tool, so thanks! We consolidated users into a bastion account, ran into annoyances with CFN, and have been using iamy ever since for change management across all our accounts (more of a writeup at https://99designs.com.au/tech-blog/blog/2015/10/26/aws-vault... )
Comment linking /your-single-aws-account-is-a-serious-risk/
on “AWS Security Primer”Submitted Using a single AWS account is a serious risk as a story · 322 points
HN discussionBe careful with SSM in general. The documentation suggests adding the AmazonEC2RoleforSSM policy to the role of the EC2 instances you want to access via Session Manager. This role grants read/write to all S3 buckets in your account (amongst other things). See this article for better steps and unavoidable risky things: https://cloudonaut.io/aws-ssm-is-a-trojan-horse-fix-it-now/
Comment linking /aws-ssm-is-a-trojan-horse-fix-it-now/
on “AWS Session Manager: less infrastructure, more features”Submitted AWS Security Primer as a story · 266 points
HN discussionYou can easily get the first part of via the sdk https://cloudonaut.io/record-aws-api-calls-to-improve-iam-po... .
Comment linking /record-aws-api-calls-to-improve-iam-policies/
on “Awsviz.dev simplifying AWS IAM policies”Submitted Wordpress on AWS: smooth and pain free as a story · 193 points
HN discussionHowdy, I'm the author :) I definitely agree, for high traffic applications a compute or memory optimized instance are more optimal choices due to the consistent performance, especially when price isn't as much of a concern. In situations where cost is more of a concern and the application has "bursty" requirements for performance, I still believe the T2 instance has it's place. The guys over at Cloudonaut have an ex…
Comment linking /burst-credits-of-t2-ec2-instances-need-monitoring/
on “AWS EC2 T2 Instances Demystified: Don’t Learn the Hard Way”Submitted Understanding Infrastructure as Code as a story · 21 points
HN discussion> For a good wee while now, AWS SSM (or AWS Systems Manager as I see they are calling it nowadays) has arguably been the most secure way to permit controlled and audited access to an EC2 instance. SSM is definitely not the most secure way[0]. SSM is super complex and super-integrated into the rest of AWS, and also isn't cross-cloud to GCP, Azure, DO, etc, so now everyone needs an account just to log into a Linux ser…
Comment linking /aws-ssm-is-a-trojan-horse-fix-it-now/
on “Emacs Tramp over AWS SSM APIs”Submitted Ways of saving EC2 costs as a story · 19 points
HN discussionI know this is an old thread now, but I just came back to it and thought to dig in a bit. First thing my Googling hit was this, which provides a good comparison of App Runner and Fargate https://cloudonaut.io/fargate-vs-apprunner/ That lack of WAF support stood out. So Googling that: https://github.com/aws/apprunner-roadmap/issues/58 "Hello, we are looking at supporting WAF in App Runner and will have more updates o…
Comment linking /fargate-vs-apprunner/
on “Ask HN: Skeptical about my company going “full serverless”. What am I missing?”Submitted AWS year in review as a story · 18 points
HN discussionThere's an SQS/Lamba integration. Push 10k messages in a queue as jobs. The lambdas pull them off and delete them once done. https://cloudonaut.io/integrate-sqs-and-lambda-serverless-ar...
Comment linking /integrate-sqs-and-lambda-serverless-architecture-for-asynchronous-workloads/
on “Show HN: Hivemind – Distributed jobs using AWS Lambda functions”Submitted AWS Account Structure: Think Twice Before Using AWS Organizations as a story · 10 points
HN discussionI'd say the most important part is knowing the tools and that comes with practice. Here's a good summary [0]. [0] https://cloudonaut.io/5-good-reasons-not-to-get-aws-certifie...
Comment linking /5-good-reasons-not-to-get-aws-certified/
on “Ask HN: Most Useful Cloud Certifications ( Azure, AWS, GCE, ... )”Submitted Advanced AWS Networking: Pitfalls That You Should Avoid as a story · 7 points
HN discussionhttps://cloudonaut.io/loosing-trust-in-aws-sns-broken-for-24... https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/izo607/im_losi...
Comment linking /loosing-trust-in-aws-sns-broken-for-24-days/
on “Losing trust in AWS. SNS is broken for 24 days”Submitted The Life of a Serverless Microservice on AWS as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted High availability is a no brainer: EC2 auto-recovery as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Create a Serverless RESTful API with API Gateway, Swagger, Lambda and DynamoDB as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Review: Amazon Connect – A Programmable Telephone System as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Serverless Big Data Pipeline on AWS as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Manage AWS EC2 SSH Access with IAM as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Serverless image resizing as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted A look at DynamoDB as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Understanding Infrastructure as Code as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Monitor your AWS account to detect suspicious behavior in real time as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted EC2 Instance Connect is an insecure default as a story · 5 points
HN discussion
