Cloud Penetration Testing

Cloud Penetration Testing - Cloud Platform Security Penetration Testing Skills

Skill Overview

Cloud Penetration Testing is a specialized cloud security assessment skill used to perform comprehensive security testing and vulnerability assessment on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) within an authorized scope.

Applicable Scenarios

1. Enterprise Cloud Environment Security Assessment

After an enterprise completes cloud migration or deploys new cloud services, use this skill to comprehensively assess the security posture of the cloud infrastructure, detect common security risks such as misconfigurations, excessive permissions, and storage leaks, and ensure the cloud environment meets security and compliance requirements.

2. Cloud Red Team Exercises and Offense-Defense Drills

During red-blue team exercises, security teams use this skill to simulate real cloud attack scenarios to test the enterprise cloud environment’s detection capabilities and response processes, including resource enumeration, credential theft, privilege escalation, and persistence techniques.

3. Cloud Application Security Audit

Before deploying cloud-native applications, development and security teams use this skill to check whether the cloud resource configurations relied on by the applications (such as IAM policies, bucket permissions, key management) contain security vulnerabilities, preventing potential cloud security incidents.

Core Features

1. Multi-Platform Resource Enumeration and Reconnaissance

Automatically discover and enumerate cloud resources across Azure, AWS, and GCP, including virtual machines, buckets, databases, function compute, container clusters, and more. Supports asset discovery via cloud platform APIs, metadata services, and public information to quickly establish an inventory of the target cloud environment.

2. Cloud Identity and Access Security Testing

In-depth testing of cloud platform authentication and access control mechanisms, including IAM policy analysis, service account exploitation, privilege escalation path discovery, and key leakage detection. Helps identify IAM security issues such as over-privileged accounts, improper credential management, and conditional access misconfigurations.

3. Cloud Configuration Exploitation and Persistence

Within an authorized scope, validate the security impact of cloud misconfigurations, including publicly accessible storage resources, metadata service exploitation, and secrets extraction from key vaults. Also provides simulated cloud persistence techniques to help organizations detect long-term, latent cloud threats.

Frequently Asked Questions

What authorizations and prerequisites are required for cloud penetration testing?

Cloud penetration testing must have explicit written authorization, including the test scope, target accounts, allowed testing times, and methods. Most cloud service providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) have their own penetration testing policies that must be understood and followed before testing. Additionally, you need access credentials for the test environment, testing tools (such as AWS CLI, Azure PowerShell, gcloud SDK), and a basic understanding of cloud platform architecture.

What are the main differences between Azure, AWS, and GCP penetration testing?

The three major cloud platforms differ in API design, permission models, service naming, and other aspects. Azure uses Azure AD and RBAC, and is primarily operated via PowerShell modules and Azure CLI; AWS uses IAM policies, with core tools being the AWS CLI and SDKs; GCP uses Cloud IAM and is primarily operated via the gcloud command-line tool. This skill has been optimized with platform-specific enumeration, exploitation, and persistence techniques for each platform.

Will cloud penetration testing be detected by cloud platform monitoring?

Yes. Cloud service providers record API calls and access logs, such as AWS CloudTrail, Azure Activity Logs, and GCP Cloud Audit Logs. Abnormal access patterns can trigger security alerts (such as GuardDuty, Security Center). This skill recommends reducing detection risk by using slow enumeration speeds, spreading tests over time, and focusing on high-value targets. In real exercises, detection and evasion of detection are themselves part of the test.