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Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the largest cloud platform, hosting infrastructure for organizations of every size. Cloud pentesting on AWS targets a fundamentally different attack surface than traditional networks: identity and access management (IAM) policies replace firewall rules, API calls replace network protocols, and misconfigured permissions replace open ports as the primary entry points.
AWS-specific attacks focus on IAM privilege escalation (overly permissive policies, assumable roles, cross-account trust), exposed storage (public S3 buckets, EBS snapshots), compute exploitation (EC2 instance metadata service, Lambda function injection, container escapes), and credential harvesting (environment variables, instance profiles, SSM Parameter Store, Secrets Manager). The metadata service at 169.254.169.254 remains one of the most exploited endpoints in cloud environments.
This section covers AWS pentesting techniques: enumeration of IAM users, roles, policies, and resource configurations, exploitation of misconfigured permissions and exposed services, privilege escalation through policy abuse, role chaining, and cross-service pivoting, and post-exploitation including data exfiltration from S3, RDS, and DynamoDB. Core tooling includes Pacu, enumerate-iam, ScoutSuite, Prowler, and the AWS CLI.
AWS recon covering S3, IAM, CloudFront, and asset exposure mapping
Techniques for enumerating AWS Account IDs and IAM principals using unauthenticated and authenticated methods to map cloud identity attack surface.
Identify and enumerate publicly exposed AWS assets including S3 buckets, EC2 instances, APIs, and misconfigured IAM policies to map an organisation's attack surface.
Enumerate AWS Route53 DNS records and CloudFront distributions to map target infrastructure, identify origins, uncover misconfigurations, and expose hidden endpoints.
Techniques for discovering exposed AWS S3 buckets through permutation, DNS enumeration, and metadata analysis to identify misconfigured storage assets.
Guides covering AWS service enum across IAM, EC2, S3, and more
Enumerate AWS CloudFormation stacks, resources, outputs, and parameters to map infrastructure, expose sensitive configs, and identify attack paths.
Techniques for enumerating AWS Cognito User Pools and Identity Pools, uncovering misconfigured auth flows, exposed pool IDs, and unauthenticated access risks.
Enumerate AWS EC2 instances and security groups using CLI and SDK techniques to map attack surface, expose misconfigurations, and identify lateral movement opportunities.
Find EC2 SSRF flaws to steal IAM creds via metadata endpoint
Detects EC2 instances with IMDSv1 enabled, exposing metadata endpoints to SSRF attacks. Covers enumeration, risk assessment, and remediation via IMDSv2 enforcement.
Guides on OIDC trust abuse and SSRF-based IMDS credential theft in AWS
Exploit SSRF vulnerabilities to query AWS IMDSv1/v2 endpoints, extract IAM role credentials, and escalate privileges within the target AWS environment.
Exploit trust relationships in OIDC federation to assume IAM roles via manipulated identity tokens, bypassing traditional credential-based authentication in AWS.
IAM PassRole and Lambda abuse guides for AWS priv esc
Exploits iam:PassRole and lambda:CreateFunction to escalate privileges by deploying a Lambda function that assumes a higher-privileged IAM role.
Covers cred types, tool install, and CLI config for AWS pentests
Covers AWS credential types (keys, IAM roles, env vars) and the resolution chain order used by SDKs and CLI to authenticate requests.
Covers AWS pentesting environment setup, including tool installation, credential configuration, IAM permissions, and CLI/SDK preparation for cloud security assessments.
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