Fake AWS free-tier expiration + IAM credential rotation lure — email impersonates AWS Billing / Support, claims the free-tier expires in 24-72 h with a large pending charge, directs to a fake AWS console to "rotate IAM credentials" or "verify account." Security Boulevard Jan 2026 "Phishing at Cloud Scale"; THN Dec 2025 IAM-crypto-mining chain; AWS Jul 2025 free-tier model change seeds Q2-Q3 2026 expiration-phish wave. Distinct from fake-cloud-compute-budget-lure (budget-alert framing)
fake-aws-free-tier-expiration-iam-rotate-lure
What this tier means
High-confidence threat indicator — phishing, impersonation, BEC, or scam pattern. Strong contributor to the trash decision.
How Gorganizer detects this
Email impersonating AWS Billing or AWS Support claiming that the recipient's AWS free-tier benefit is expiring in 24-72 hours (or has already expired), often attaching a large pending dollar charge, and directing the recipient to "verify their account," "rotate IAM access keys," or "re-authenticate the root user" through a fake AWS console page that harvests credentials. Security Boulevard January 2026 reported "Phishing at Cloud Scale: How AWS is Abused for Credential Theft"; The Hacker News December 2025 traced an IAM-to-crypto-mining chain beginning with a credential-harvesting AWS console lure; AWS's July 2025 free-tier model change created a predictable wave of genuine expiration notifications that attackers can mimic, seeding Q2-Q3 2026 phishing campaigns. Scored +3 (not +4-5) because real AWS billing emails share vocabulary (charges, IAM, console) — the three-cluster composite (brand + free-tier-expiry + IAM-rotate CTA) with no In-Reply-To keeps the false-positive rate bounded. Distinct from `fake-cloud-compute-budget-lure` (budget-alert framing, not free-tier expiry). Fires when all three clusters are present from a sender not on the @amazon.com / @amazonaws.com official allowlist.
False-positive guard
Every signal in Gorganizer feeds a multi-module score — never a sole verdict. This is a threat-tier signal — it adds a strong contribution to the trash score. The full pipeline still requires convergence across multiple modules + a margin over the safety floor before deletion happens, and Gmail's trash (30-day recovery) is always used — never permanent delete.
About the scoring engine
Gorganizer's scoring engine emits over 1,800 signals across six modules — headers, sender, subject, body, attachments, and structural metadata. Every email is scored by every module independently; the final verdict requires multiple modules to agree and the trash score to beat the safety floor by a margin.
Sacred safety guards — never delete starred emails, replies, calendar invites, receipts/invoices, or attachments — apply unconditionally regardless of any signal.
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