Cloud Infrastructure Penetration Testing
Adversary-driven penetration testing across AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes environments
What this engagement covers
The service
Cloud misconfigurations and over-permissive identity policies are the leading causes of enterprise data breaches. Our cloud infrastructure penetration testing services simulate realistic adversary tactics targeting your IaaS, PaaS, and serverless environments. Senior cloud security specialists identify critical IAM privilege escalation paths, misconfigured identity federations, exposed cloud storage, vulnerable container runtimes, and lateral movement vectors between cloud and on-premise networks.
What we test
We assess AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and multi-cloud environments. Testing covers IAM roles and policies, cloud storage (S3, Azure Blob, GCS), network security groups and peering, serverless functions (Lambda, Cloud Functions), Kubernetes clusters (EKS, AKS, GKE), secrets managers, metadata service (IMDSv2) security, and CI/CD deployment pipelines.
Scoping & Assessment Depth
Assumed Breach / IAM Review (Recommended)
Most PopularTesting begins from an assumed role or compromised identity to assess blast radius, credential pivoting, and multi-hop privilege escalation paths.
External Cloud Perimeter Assessment
Adversary SimulationZero-knowledge testing simulating an external attacker targeting public storage buckets, exposed management consoles, API gateways, and external interfaces.
Hybrid & Cross-Cloud Movement
Maximum DepthSimulating adversary movement between on-premise corporate networks and cloud environments across DirectConnect, ExpressRoute, and VPN tunnels.
Attack Surface & Vulnerability Vectors
IAM Privilege Escalation
Exploiting over-permissive IAM permissions (PassRole, AssumeRole, policy attachment) to elevate low-tier identities to AdministratorAccess.
Cloud Storage & Object Exposure
Auditing S3 bucket ACLs, Azure Blob containers, and GCS buckets for public read/write permissions, missing encryption, and snapshot leaks.
Serverless & Compute Compromise
Attacking Lambda and Cloud Functions through code injection to steal environment variables and harvest temporary STS security credentials.
Kubernetes & Container Escapes
Assessing EKS/AKS/GKE cluster RBAC, pod security admission, container escape paths, and unauthenticated kubelet/API server access.
Instance Metadata (IMDS) Abuse
Exploiting SSRF vulnerabilities on compute instances to query IMDSv1/v2 endpoints and extract attached instance profile tokens.
CI/CD & Secret Pipeline Leaks
Auditing GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and AWS CodeBuild runners for hardcoded secrets, excessive IAM permissions, and pipeline tampering.
How we run it
Combining the MITRE ATT&CK Cloud Matrix with CIS Cloud Benchmarks and cloud provider security guidelines, our testers identify architectural weaknesses, simulate credential compromise, and attempt multi-step privilege escalation from low-level service accounts to tenant administrator (Account Takeover), providing actionable Terraform/CloudFormation remediation code.
Cloud Inventory & Architecture Mapping
Discovering cloud accounts, regions, VPC topologies, compute instances, storage containers, serverless assets, and IAM role hierarchies.
Identity & Access Management (IAM) Audit
Analyzing permission boundaries, cross-account trust relationships, wildcard policies, service principal roles, and credential rotation.
Privilege Escalation Chain Testing
Actively executing known cloud privilege escalation vectors (e.g. iam:PassRole, lambda:CreateFunction, ec2:AssociateIamInstanceProfile).
Data Storage & Encryption Review
Verifying encryption at rest (KMS), bucket policy integrity, versioning controls, public block settings, and database snapshot sharing.
Network Perimeter & Segmentation Review
Auditing Security Groups, Network ACLs, VPC peering routes, NAT gateways, and private subnet isolation to test for network egress leaks.
Container & Orchestration Security (K8s)
Evaluating Kubernetes cluster RBAC, service account tokens, network policies, container escape vectors, and node-level isolation.
Logging, Monitoring & GuardDuty Evasion
Testing whether CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Security Hub, or Azure Sentinel alert on adversarial reconnaissance and credential abuse.
Remediation Architecture & Retest
Delivering Infrastructure-as-Code policy fixes, Least-Privilege recommendations, and validating all deployed fixes with free retesting.
What you receive
Findings land in your tracker as you go, not only in a PDF at the end. Retest is in scope, not a change order.
- Executive cloud security posture and risk impact report
- Detailed technical findings with verified CVSS v3.1/v4 scores
- Visual attack path graphs demonstrating IAM privilege escalation chains
- Terraform, CloudFormation, and CLI remediation code snippets
- Auditor-ready compliance crosswalk (SOC 2, ISO 27001, CIS Benchmarks)
- Talon real-time portal access with bi-directional Jira/GitHub ticket sync
- Post-remediation retest report validating configuration fixes
- Formal, signed Letter of Attestation for enterprise customers and auditors
What we usually find
The issues this engagement surfaces most often. Yours will differ, but this is the shape of it.
Who this is for
Auditor-Ready Compliance Crosswalk
| Framework | Control Section | Testing Evidence & Report Deliverable |
|---|---|---|
| CIS Cloud Benchmarks | AWS / Azure / GCP Foundations | Technical validation against consensus-backed security benchmarks for cloud identity, networking, storage, and monitoring controls. |
| SOC 2 Type II | CC6.1, CC6.6, CC7.1 | Independent technical validation of cloud logical access, network boundaries, and boundary protection for CPA audit workpapers. |
| PCI DSS v4.0 | Requirement 1.2, 2.2, 11.4 | Penetration testing of cloud environments hosting or routing cardholder data, including virtual firewall and IAM segmentation. |
| ISO/IEC 27001:2022 | Control A.8.8, A.8.9, A.8.12 | Management of technical vulnerabilities, configuration management, and data leakage prevention across cloud architectures. |
| FedRAMP / NIST | NIST SP 800-53 AC-2, AC-3, CA-8 | Comprehensive penetration testing supporting FedRAMP authorization packages for cloud-hosted applications and infrastructure. |
Findings are mapped to CIS Benchmarks, AWS Well-Architected, SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, so the report drops into an audit package rather than needing to be translated first. If you need the readiness work behind one of those, that is a separate engagement.
Frequently Asked Questions
Direct answers on scoping, methodology, compliance validation, and deliverables.
Most major cloud providers (including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud) permit penetration testing of your own tenant resources under their published customer testing policies without prior authorization, provided specific prohibited activities (like physical data center testing or DDoS) are excluded. We operate strictly within these authorized guidelines.
For the most thorough assessment (Assumed Breach / Gray Box), we request a low-privileged read-only audit role (such as AWS SecurityAudit or Azure Reader) to map configurations, plus a standard test role to probe privilege escalation. We never require root or global admin access to begin testing.
CSPM tools only check static configuration flags against generic rules, generating hundreds of low-priority alerts without testing exploitability. Lorikeet's cloud pentest is adversary-driven: our researchers actively chain permissions, test whether identity boundaries can be bypassed, and prove whether an attacker could compromise your crown jewels.
Yes. Every cloud penetration testing engagement includes complimentary retesting within 30 to 60 days. After your team updates IAM policies or Infrastructure-as-Code templates, we verify that the attack paths are completely closed and issue an updated clean attestation.
Yes. Container and Kubernetes cluster security is a core component of our cloud pentesting service. We evaluate cluster RBAC, service account token exposures, pod security standards, container escape vectors, and network policy enforcement.
Scope it in one call
Tell us what is in scope and we come back with a fixed price and a start date. No discovery-call maze, no hourly estimate that moves.
