AWS Penetration Testing: A Comprehensive Guide

 

AWS Shared Responsibility Model

AWS security testing follows a shared responsibility model. Amazon distinguishes between two types of security:

Security of the Cloud (Amazon’s Responsibility)

This refers to the security of the AWS cloud platform itself, including all AWS services and the cloud platform. Amazon is responsible for securing the cloud platform and regularly conducts tests with internal or external security engineers. Customers are not allowed to perform penetration testing on this aspect of cloud security.

Security in the Cloud (Customer’s Responsibility)

This refers to the security of resources or assets deployed by an organization on the AWS platform. These responsibilities lie with the company or resource owner, who must ensure that applications, assets, and systems are securely configured. Generally, organizations are allowed to conduct penetration testing to verify these aspects of a secure deployment.

What is Allowed to Test in AWS?

Amazon allows customers to perform penetration testing on AWS assets. However, there are certain terms and conditions on what you can and cannot test across the platforms.

Here’s what is allowed in AWS penetration testing:

• Web application scanning
• Port scanning
• Injections
• Exploitation
• Vulnerability scanning or checks
• Forgery
• Fuzzing 

A Detailed Summary:

• Allowed: Security tools that remotely check AWS assets to identify software names and versions. For example, banner grabbing. This aims to compare against vulnerable versions for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
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• Allowed: Security tools or services that temporarily or permanently crash a running process on AWS assets for local or remote exploitation. However, it is not allowed for resource request flooding or protocol flooding.

You can conduct these security tests remotely on AWS assets, locally on virtualized assets, or between AWS assets.

What is Not Allowed to Test in AWS?

AWS allows you to conduct security assessments like penetration testing to check your security measures. However, AWS also ensures that these tests do not affect other AWS users or the quality of the AWS services.

Here’s what is NOT allowed in AWS penetration testing:

• DNS zone walking, hijacking, or pharming 
• Protocol flooding
• Port flooding
• Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS)
• Simulated DoS and DDoS
• Request flooding (API request flooding, login request flooding)

Customers are responsible for verifying and validating that any security test performed by the customer or someone on their behalf follows these policies. Those who violate this policy will be held responsible for any damages to AWS or AWS customers caused by their security testing activities.

Prerequisites for AWS Penetration Testing

Define the following aspects before you conduct penetration testing on AWS assets:

• The scope of the penetration test, which includes the target system 
• The type of penetration test to be performed
• Requirements of the penetration test, which should be mutually agreed upon by the stakeholders and the pentesting contractor
• A protocol that the penetration tester should follow in case they discover a vulnerability
• A schedule for the penetration test
• Written approval by system owners for pentesters to conduct the test
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How to Perform AWS Penetration Testing

Performing AWS penetration testing requires careful planning and execution. However, it is equally important to ensure thorough security assessments with minimal disruptions.

Here are the basic steps of performing penetration testing on AWS:

Step 1: Get Appropriate Authorization

Before conducting any security testing, get written permission from the AWS account owner or organization. This may require you to contact AWS support (if you are seeking to test non-approved services) or follow your organization’s specific security policies.

Step 2: Define Scope and Goals

Define which systems, applications, and AWS services you need to test. Consider any compliance rules or confidential data that needs protection. In addition to that, learn more about how to prepare for a penetration test.

Step 3: Set Up Testing Environment

Make a separate testing environment in AWS, which is different from the production environment to prevent accidental disruptions. This may include setting up virtual machines, networks, and security groups exclusively for the pen test.

Step 4: Understand the Attack Surface

Gather as much information as you can about the AWS environment you are going to test. This involves identifying services, subnets, instances, S3 buckets, Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles, and other possible weak points. Furthermore, you can use techniques like network scanning, vulnerability scanning, and social engineering.

Step 5: Conduct Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT)

The main goal of AWS penetration testing is to find vulnerabilities present in the AWS environment. You can find weaknesses in various areas such as IAM policies, S3 bucket permissions, and EC2 instance configurations. For example, you might examine AWS CloudTrail logs to track user activity and uncover potential security risks.

Step 6: Exploit Vulnerabilities

Once you detect the vulnerabilities, you need to exploit them to determine their impact. This might involve exploiting weak access controls, misconfigurations, or vulnerabilities specific to certain AWS services. However, you need to ensure that you target only your resources and do not affect other AWS users.

Step 7: Report and Remediate

The penetration testers make a detailed report that outlines the vulnerabilities found and the steps to remediate them. Further, you can share this report with the system owner or administrator to make the necessary fixes.

Have you ever seen an AWS penetration testing report? If not, here’s your chance. Quickly click below and download a sample report now!