AWS

Announcing Amazon EC2 G7e instances accelerated by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs

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Today, we’re announcing the general availability of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) G7e instances that deliver cost-effective performance for generative AI inference workloads and the highest performance for graphics workloads.

G7e instances are accelerated by the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs and are well suited for a broad range of GPU-enabled workloads including spatial computing and scientific computing workloads. G7e instances deliver up to 2.3 times inference performance compared to G6e instances.

Improvements made compared to predecessors:

  • NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs — NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs offer two times the GPU memory and 1.85 times the GPU memory bandwidth compared to G6e instances. By using the higher GPU memory offered by G7e instances, you can run medium-sized models of up to 70B parameters with FP8 precision on a single GPU.
  • NVIDIA GPUDirect P2P — For models that are too large to fit into the memory of a single GPU, you can split the model or computations across multiple GPUs. G7e instances reduce the latency of your multi-GPU workloads with support for NVIDIA GPUDirect P2P, which enables direct communication between GPUs over PCIe interconnect. These instances offer the lowest peer to peer latency for GPUs on the same PCIe switch. Additionally, G7e instances offer up to four times the inter-GPU bandwidth compared to L40s GPUs featured in G6e instances, boosting the performance of multi-GPU workloads. These improvements mean you can run inference for larger models across multiple GPUs offering up to 768 GB of GPU memory in a single node.
  • Networking — G7e instances offer four times the networking bandwidth compared to G6e instances, which means you can use the instance for small-scale multi-node workloads. Additionally, multi-GPU G7e instances support NVIDIA GPUDirect Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) with Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA), which reduces the latency of remote GPU-to-GPU communication for multi-node workloads. These instance sizes also support NVIDIA GPUDirectStorage with Amazon FSx for Lustre, which increases throughput by up to 1.2 Tbps to the instances compared to G6e instances, which means you can quickly load your models.

EC2 G7e specifications
G7e instances feature up to 8 NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs with up to 768 GB of total GPU memory (96 GB of memory per GPU) and Intel Emerald Rapids processors. They also support up to 192 vCPUs, up to 1,600 Gbps of network bandwidth, up to 2,048 GiB of system memory, and up to 15.2 TB of local NVMe SSD storage.

Here are the specs:

Instance name
  GPUs GPU memory (GB) vCPUs Memory (GiB) Storage (TB) EBS bandwidth (Gbps) Network bandwidth (Gbps)
g7e.2xlarge 1 96 8 64 1.9 x 1 Up to 5 50
g7e.4xlarge 1 96 16 128 1.9 x 1 8 50
g7e.8xlarge 1 96 32 256 1.9 x 1 16 100
g7e.12xlarge 2 192 48 512 3.8 x 1 25 400
g7e.24xlarge 4 384 96 1024 3.8 x 2 50 800
g7e.48xlarge 8 768 192 2048 3.8 x 4 100 1600

To get started with G7e instances, you can use the AWS Deep Learning AMIs (DLAMI) for your machine learning (ML) workloads. To run instances, you can use AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or AWS SDKs. For a managed experience, you can use G7e instances with Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS). Support for Amazon SageMaker AI is also coming soon.

Now available
Amazon EC2 G7e instances are available today in the US East (N. Virginia) and US East (Ohio) AWS Regions. For Regional availability and a future roadmap, search the instance type in the CloudFormation resources tab of AWS Capabilities by Region.

The instances can be purchased as On-Demand Instances, Savings Plan, and Spot Instances. G7e instances are also available in Dedicated Instances and Dedicated Hosts. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 Pricing page.

Give G7e instances a try in the Amazon EC2 console. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 G7e instances page and send feedback to AWS re:Post for EC2 or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

Security

Add Punycode to your Threat Hunting Routine, (Tue, Jan 20th)

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IDNs or “International Domain Names” have been with us for a while now (see RFC3490[1]). They are (ab)used in many attack scenarios because.. it works! Who can immediately spot the difference between:

https://youtube.com/

And:

https://youtube.com/

The magic is to replace classic characters by others that look almost the same. In the example above, the letter “o” has been replaced by Greek character “o”.

If they are very efficient for attackers, they remain below the radar in many organizations. To avoid issues when printing unusual characters, Punycode[2] helps to encode them in plain characters. The example above will be encoded as:

xn--yutube-wqf.com

This format is based on:

  • “xn--“ : the common prefix for all IDNs requests.
  • “yutube.com”: The normal ASCII characters
  • “wqf” : The Punycode encoded version of the Unicode character

Python can decode them easily:

$ python3
Python 3.12.3 (main, Jan  8 2026, 11:30:50) [GCC 13.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> domain = "xn--yutube-wqf.com"
>>> decoded = domain.encode("ascii").decode("idna")
>>> print(decoded)
y?utube.com
>>> for c in decoded:
...     print(f"{c} -> {ord(c)}")
...
y -> 121
? -> 1086
u -> 117
t -> 116
u -> 117
b -> 98
e -> 101
. -> 46
c -> 99
o -> 111
m -> 109
>>>

You can see the value of “o” is not “usual” (not in the ASCII range). They are plenty of online tools that can (de|en)code Punycode[3].

If not all IDNs are suspicious, they are not very common and deserve some searches in your logs. If you already collect your DNS resolver logs (I hope you do!), it’s easy to search for such domains:

$ grep "xn--" queries.log*
queries.log:19-Jan-2026 19:54:38.399 queries: info: client @0x999999999999 192.168.255.13#47099 (in.xn--b1akcbzf.xn--90amc.xn--p1acf): query: in.xn--b1akcbzf.xn--90amc.xn--p1acf IN A +E(0) (192.168.254.8)
queries.log:20-Jan-2026 04:38:25.877 queries: info: client @0x999999999999 192.168.255.13#49850 (in.xn--b1akcbzf.xn--90amc.xn--p1acf): query: in.xn--b1akcbzf.xn--90amc.xn--p1acf IN A +E(0) (192.168.254.8)
queries.log.0:18-Jan-2026 15:22:11.741 queries: info: client @0x9999999999 192.168.255.13#60763 (in.xn--b1akcbzf.xn--90amc.xn--p1acf): query: in.xn--b1akcbzf.xn--90amc.xn--p1acf IN A +E(0) (192.168.254.8)
queries.log.0:18-Jan-2026 17:27:23.127 queries: info: client @0x99999999999 192.168.255.13#44141 (in.xn--b1akcbzf.xn--90amc.xn--p1acf): query: in.xn--b1akcbzf.xn--90amc.xn--p1acf IN A +E(0) (192.168.254.8)
queries.log.0:18-Jan-2026 22:54:36.841 queries: info: client @0x99999999999 192.168.255.13#35963 (in.xn--b1akcbzf.xn--90amc.xn--p1acf): query: in.xn--b1akcbzf.xn--90amc.xn--p1acf IN A +E(0) (192.168.254.8)

The detected Punycode domain is decoded to: 

Another good proof that DNS is a goldmine for threat hunting!

[1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3490
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode
[3] https://regery.com/en/domains/tools/punycode-decoder

Xavier Mertens (@xme)
Xameco
Senior ISC Handler – Freelance Cyber Security Consultant
PGP Key

(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. https://isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

AWS

AWS Weekly Roundup: Kiro CLI latest features, AWS European Sovereign Cloud, EC2 X8i instances, and more (January 19, 2026)

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At the end of 2025 I was happy to take a long break to enjoy the incredible summers that the southern hemisphere provides. I’m back and writing my first post in 2026 which also happens to be my last post for the AWS News Blog (more on this later).

The AWS community is starting the year strong with various AWS re:invent re:Caps being hosted around the globe, with some communities already hosting their AWS Community Day events, the AWS Community Day Tel Aviv 2026 was hosted last week.

Last week’s launches
Here are last week’s launches that caught my attention:

  • Kiro CLI latest features – Kiro CLI now has granular controls for web fetch URLs, keyboard shortcuts for your custom agents, enhanced diff views, and much more. With these enhancements, you can now use allowlists or blocklists to restrict which URLs the agent can access, ensure a frictionless experience when working with multiple specialized agents in a single session, to name a few.
  • AWS European Sovereign Cloud – Following an announcement in 2023 of plans to build a new, independent cloud infrastructure, last week we announced the general availability of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to all customers. The cloud is ready to meet the most stringent sovereignty requirements of European customers with a comprehensive set of AWS services.
  • Amazon EC2 X8i instances – Previously launched in preview at AWS re:Invent 2025, last week we announced the general availability of new memory-optimized Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) X8i instances. These instances are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors with a sustained all-core turbo frequency of 3.9 GHz, available only on AWS. These SAP certified instances deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud.

Additional updates
These projects, blog posts, and news articles also caught my attention:

  • 5 core features in Amazon Quick Suite – AWS VP Agentic AI Swami Sivasubramanian talks about how he uses Amazon Quick Suite for just about everything. In October 2025 we announced Amazon Quick Suite, a new agentic teammate that quickly answers your questions at work and turns insights into actions for you. Amazon Quick Suite has become one of my favorite productivity tools, helping me with my research on various topics in addition to providing me with multiple perspectives on a topic.
  • Deploy AI agents on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore using GitHub Actions – Last year we announced Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, a flexible service that helps you seamlessly create and manage AI agents across different frameworks and models, whether hosted on Amazon Bedrock or other environments. Learn how to use a GitHub Actions workflow to automate the deployment of AI agents on AgentCore Runtime. This approach delivers a scalable solution with enterprise-level security controls, providing complete continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) automation.

Upcoming AWS events
Join us January 28 or 29 (depending on your time zone) for Best of AWS re:Invent, a free virtual event where we bring you the most impactful announcements and top sessions from AWS re:Invent. Jeff Barr, AWS VP and Chief Evangelist, will share his highlights during the opening session.

There is still time until January 21 to compete for $250,000 in prizes and AWS credits in the Global 10,000 AIdeas Competition (yes, the second letter is an I as in Idea, not an L as in like). No code required yet: simply submit your idea, and if you’re selected as a semifinalist, you’ll build your app using Kiro within AWS Free Tier limits. Beyond the cash prizes and potential featured placement at AWS re:Invent 2026, you’ll gain hands-on experience with next-generation AI tools and connect with innovators globally.

Earlier this month, the 2026 application for the Community Builders program launched. The application is open until January 21st, midnight PST so here’s your last chance to ensure that you don’t miss out.

If you’re interested in these opportunities, join the AWS Builder Center to learn with builders in the AWS community.

With that, I close one of my most meaningful chapters here at AWS. It’s been an absolute pleasure to write for you and I thank you for taking the time to read the work that my team and I pour our absolute hearts into. I’ve grown from the close collaborations with the launch teams and the feedback from all of you. The Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) community has grown significantly, and I want to dedicate more time focused on this community, I’m still at AWS and I look forward to meeting at an event near you!

Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

– Veliswa Boya

Security

"How many states are there in the United States?", (Sun, Jan 18th)

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I've seen many API requests for different LLMs in the honeypot logs.

Like this one:

The prompt is always the same: "How many states are there in the United States?".

This is recon to find open LLMs. Not necessarily to exploit them, but to use them.

Coincidentally, something similar has been reported in the news: "Hackers target misconfigured proxies to access paid LLM services"

Make sure your LLMs are not exposed to the Internet without authentication.

 

Didier Stevens
Senior handler
blog.DidierStevens.com

(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. https://isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

AWS

Amazon EC2 X8i instances powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors are generally available for memory-intensive workloads

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Since a preview launch at AWS re:Invent 2025, we’re announcing the general availability of new memory-optimized Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) X8i instances. These instances are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors with a sustained all-core turbo frequency of 3.9 GHz, available only on AWS. These SAP certified instances deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud.

X8i instances are ideal for memory-intensive workloads including in-memory databases such as SAP HANA, traditional large-scale databases, data analytics, and electronic design automation (EDA), which require high compute performance and a large memory footprint.

These instances provide 1.5 times more memory capacity (up to 6 TB), and 3.4 times more memory bandwidth compared to previous generation X2i instances. These instances offer up to 43% higher performance compared to X2i instances, with higher gains on some of the real-world workloads. They deliver up to 50% higher SAP Application Performance Standard (SAPS) performance, up to 47% faster PostgreSQL performance, up to 88% faster Memcached performance, and up to 46% faster AI inference performance.

During the preview, customers like RISE with SAP utilized up to 6 TB of memory capacity with 50% higher compute performance compared to X2i instances. This enabled faster transaction processing and improved query response times for SAP HANA workloads. Orion reduced the number of active cores on X8i instances compared to X2idn instances while maintaining performance thresholds, cutting SQL Server licensing costs by 50%.

X8i instances
X8i instances are available in 14 sizes including three larger instance sizes (48xlarge, 64xlarge, and 96xlarge), so you can choose the right size for your application to scale up, and two bare metal sizes (metal-48xl and metal-96xl) to deploy workloads that benefit from direct access to physical resources. X8i instances feature up to 100 Gbps of network bandwidth with support for the Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) and up to 80 Gbps of throughput to Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS).

Here are the specs for X8i instances:

Instance name vCPUs Memory
(GiB)		 Network bandwidth (Gbps) EBS bandwidth (Gbps)
x8i.large 2 32 Up to 12.5 Up to 10
x8i.xlarge 4 64 Up to 12.5 Up to 10
x8i.2xlarge 8 128 Up to 15 Up to 10
x8i.4xlarge 16 256 Up to 15 Up to 10
x8i.8xlarge 32 512 15 10
x8i.12xlarge 48 768 22.5 15
x8i.16xlarge 64 1,024 30 20
x8i.24xlarge 96 1,536 40 30
x8i.32xlarge 128 2,048 50 40
x8i.48xlarge 192 3,072 75 60
x8i.64xlarge 256 4,096 80 70
x8i.96xlarge 384 6,144 100 80
x8i.metal-48xl 192 3,072 75 60
x8i.metal-96xl 384 6,144 100 80

X8i instances support the instance bandwidth configuration (IBC) feature like other eighth-generation instance types, offering flexibility to allocate resources between network and EBS bandwidth. You can scale network or EBS bandwidth by up to 25%, improving database performance, query processing speeds, and logging efficiency. These instances also use sixth-generation AWS Nitro cards, which offload CPU virtualization, storage, and networking functions to dedicated hardware and software, enhancing performance and security for your workloads.

Now available
Amazon EC2 X8i instances are now available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Frankfurt) AWS Regions. For Regional availability and a future roadmap, search the instance type in the CloudFormation resources tab of AWS Capabilities by Region.

You can purchase these instances as On-Demand Instances, Savings Plan, and Spot Instances. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 Pricing page.

Give X8i instances a try in the Amazon EC2 console. To learn more, visit the Amazon EC2 X8i instances page and send feedback to AWS re:Post for EC2 or through your usual AWS Support contacts.

— Channy

AWS

AWS Weekly Roundup: AWS Lambda for .NET 10, AWS Client VPN quickstart, Best of AWS re:Invent, and more (January 12, 2026)

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At the beginning of January, I tend to set my top resolutions for the year, a way to focus on what I want to achieve. If AI and cloud computing are on your resolution list, consider creating an AWS Free Tier account to receive up to $200 in credits and have 6 months of risk-free experimentation with AWS services.

During this period, you can explore essential services across compute, storage, databases, and AI/ML, plus access to over 30 always-free services with monthly usage limits. After 6 months, you can decide whether to upgrade to a standard AWS account.

Whether you’re a student exploring career options, a developer expanding your skill set, or a professional building with cloud technologies, this hands-on approach lets you focus on what matters most: developing real expertise in the areas you’re passionate about.

Last week’s launches
Here are the launches that got my attention this week:

Additional updates
Here are some additional projects, blog posts, and news items that I found interesting:

Crossmodal search with Amazon Nova Multimodal Embeddings Architecture

Upcoming AWS events
Join us January 28 or 29 (depending on your time zone) for Best of AWS re:Invent, a free virtual event where we bring you the most impactful announcements and top sessions from AWS re:Invent. Jeff Barr, AWS VP and Chief Evangelist, will share his highlights during the opening session.

There is still time until January 21 to compete for $250,000 in prizes and AWS credits in the Global 10,000 AIdeas Competition (yes, the second letter is an I as in Idea, not an L as in like). No code required yet: simply submit your idea, and if you’re selected as a semifinalist, you’ll build your app using Kiro within AWS Free Tier limits. Beyond the cash prizes and potential featured placement at AWS re:Invent 2026, you’ll gain hands-on experience with next-generation AI tools and connect with innovators globally.

If you’re interested in these opportunities, join the AWS Builder Center to learn with builders in the AWS community.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

– Danilo

Security

YARA-X 1.11.0 Release: Hash Function Warnings, (Sun, Jan 11th)

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YARA-X's 1.11.0 release brings a new feature: hash function warnings.

When you write a YARA rule to match a cryptographic hash (either the full file content or a part of it), what's actually going on are string comparisons:

Function hash.sha256 returns a string (the hexadecimal SHA256 hash it calculated) and that is compared to a literal string that is the hash you want to find.

If you make a mistake in your literal string hash (for example: unintentionally add an extra space), then the match will fail.

But YARA-X will now show a warning like this:

Another example is where you mixup hashes: you provide a SHA1 literal string hash, and it should be a SHA256.

 

Didier Stevens
Senior handler
blog.DidierStevens.com

(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. https://isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.