Bartek Chojnacki

Amazon Threat Intelligence uncovered a DPRK-linked threat actor compromising popular Node Package Manager libraries used globally. Cloud engineers should audit their npm dependencies immediately and implement strict supply chain verification to block malicious package installations.

AWS now lets you use Instance Refresh directly in CloudFormation templates. When you update properties requiring instance replacement, CloudFormation automatically handles the refresh with zero-downtime deployments. You get features like launch-before-terminate, alarm monitoring, and controlled rollouts—all while keeping your scaling policies and health checks active.

Amazon Redshift Data API now features long polling to cut API calls, session management for tracking active queries, and flexible batch execution with AUTO_COMMIT mode. Each SQL statement in a batch runs independently, so one failure won't roll back everything—perfect for ETL pipelines. You can also reuse parameters across statements, making queries cleaner and more efficient.

Amazon EKS Provisioned Control Plane just got a serious boost—HPA sync concurrency is now up to 40x faster than default Kubernetes. Your pods will scale way quicker when demand spikes, with zero config changes needed. Perfect for clusters running hundreds of HPA objects.

Good news for data nerds! AWS DataSync Enhanced mode now supports Amazon EFS and FSx for Lustre as source or destination. This means parallel processing, no file limits, and detailed metrics for your large-scale migrations, ML training, and HPC workloads. Level up your data transfer game today.

AWS KMS and AWS CloudHSM both guard your crypto keys with hardware security modules, but they're built for different missions. Learn which one fits your security posture and compliance needs so you don't accidentally pick the wrong tool for the job.

AWS is tightening the integration between AWS Shield Advanced and AWS WAF to help you block application-layer DDoS attacks that masquerade as legitimate traffic. Learn what's changing in the managed rule group and how to update your Firewall Manager setup to stay protected against HTTP floods.

Good news for security-conscious DevOps folks: Amazon EKS now lets you access OIDC endpoints privately through AWS PrivateLink, ditching the need for internet egress. Your VPC-based tools like eksctl and Terraform can now validate IRSA tokens without leaving your network. No extra costs—just standard PrivateLink pricing.

AWS rolled out several major features this week: a new Local Zone in Athens for ultra-low latency, Claude Opus 5 integration on AWS, and Lambda durable execution support for .NET developers. Developers across Europe and beyond now have fresh tools to build faster, smarter applications with improved performance and reliability.