GhostWeights

The Open Source Shadow AI Discovery Tool for AWS

What is GhostWeights?

GhostWeights is a specialized cloud security tool written in Go. It hunts for "Shadow AI"—unauthorized AI/ML workloads running in your AWS environment.

In 2026, developers frequently deploy powerful LLMs (like Llama 3, Mistral) or AI tools (Streamlit, Ray) on EC2 instances, often bypassing security controls. These "Shadow AI" endpoints can expose your organization to:

• Remote Code Execution (RCE) (e.g., exposed Ollama APIs).
• Data Exfiltration (publicly accessible RAG datasets).
• Massive Cloud Bills (forgotten GPU instances running 24/7).

GhostWeights scans your infrastructure to find these artifacts before attackers do.

Key Features (v1.0)

• Network Recon: Scans EC2 Security Groups for specific "AI Signature" ports:
  • 11434 (Ollama)
  • 8501 (Streamlit)
  • 8265 (Ray Dashboard)
  • 7860 (Gradio / HuggingFace)
  • 8000 (vLLM / FastChat)
• Deep AI Scanning (SSM): Executes forensic checks inside instances to:
  • Detect NVIDIA GPUs (finds hidden training nodes).
  • Identify running models (e.g., "Llama-3-8b") by inspecting process arguments.
  • Find vLLM and Ollama servers running on non-standard ports.
• Interactive UI: Features a modern CLI with spinners, progress tables, and interactive region selection.
• Risk Grading: Automatically categorizes findings by risk level (Critical, High, Medium).

Example Output (Risks Detected)

Phase 1: Initialization
✓ Connected to AWS (us-east-1)

Phase 2: Discovery & Analysis
✓ Scan Complete

🚨 Found 3 potential issues:

Risk      Service                 Instance ID          Description                                Evidence
CRITICAL  Ollama API              i-0a1b2c3d4e5f6g7h8  Active Ollama API                          Port 11434 open to 0.0.0.0/0
HIGH      vLLM Inference Server   i-11223344556677889  Serving model: Llama-3-8b on GPU (T4)      Cmd: python -m vllm.entrypoints...
MED       Suspicious Process      i-99887766554433221  Potential AI workload                      Cmd: python3 train.py --epochs 10

Installation

git clone https://github.com/K0NGR3SS/ghostweights.git
cd ghostweights
go mod tidy
go run ./cmd/ghostweights --help

Usage

Show help

go run ./cmd/ghostweights –-help

Scan (interactive region prompt)

Runs a scan and prompts for AWS Region if you don’t pass –-region

go run ./cmd/ghostweights scan

Scan a specific region (non-interactive)

go run ./cmd/ghostweights scan –-region eu-west-1

Deep scan (SSM process hunting)

Enables AWS SSM inspection of running processes (requires SSM Agent + permissions like ssm:SendCommand on targets).

go run ./cmd/ghostweights scan –-deep

Deep scan in a specific region (recommended for CI)

go run ./cmd/ghostweights scan –-region eu-west-1 –-deep

Generate shell autocompletion

zsh

go run ./cmd/ghostweights completion zsh

bash

go run ./cmd/ghostweights completion bash

fish

go run ./cmd/ghostweights completion fish

powershell

go run ./cmd/ghostweights completion powershell

Print version

go run ./cmd/ghostweights version

Legal disclaimer

This tool is intended only for authorized security testing and defensive security auditing on systems you own or have explicit permission to assess. Unauthorized scanning or exploitation may be illegal; you are responsible for complying with all applicable laws, contracts, and cloud provider policies. The software is provided "as is", without warranty, and the authors are not liable for any damages resulting from use or misuse.