Hacking and Securing Cloud Infrastructure

Course Description

This 3-day course cuts through the mystery of Cloud Services (including AWS, Azure, and G-Cloud) to uncover the vulnerabilities that lie beneath. We will cover a number of popular services and delve into both what makes them different, and what makes them the same, as compared to hacking and securing traditional network infrastructure. Whether you are an Architect, Developer, Pentester, Security or DevOps Engineer, or anyone with a need to understand and manage vulnerabilities in a Cloud environment, understanding relevant hacking techniques, and knowing how to protect yourself from them is critical.

This course covers both the theory as well as a number of modern techniques that may be used to compromise various Cloud services and infrastructure. Prior pentest/security experience is not a strict requirement, however, some knowledge of Cloud Services and familiarity with common Unix command-line syntax will be beneficial.

Highlights of our Training:

  • Gaining Entry in cloud via exposed services
  • Attacking specific cloud services
  • Post Exploitation
  • Defending the Cloud Environment
  • Host base Defenses
  • Auditing and benchmarking of Cloud
  • Continuous Security Testing of Cloud

Course contents

Whether you are an Architect, Developer, Pentester, Security or DevOps Engineer, or anyone with a need to understand and manage vulnerabilities in a Cloud environment, understanding relevant hacking techniques, and knowing how to protect yourself from them is critical. This course covers both the theory a well as a number of modern techniques that may be used to compromise various Cloud services and infrastructure.

Prior pentest/security experience is not a strict requirement, however, some knowledge of Cloud Services and familiarity with common Unix command-line syntax will be beneficial.

Day 1

  • Introduction to Cloud Computing
    • Introduction to cloud and why cloud security matters
    • Comparison with conventional security models
    • Shared responsibility model
    • Legalities around Cloud Pentesting
    • Attacking Cloud Services
  • Enumeration of Cloud environments
    • DNS based enumeration
    • OSINT techniques for cloud based asset
    • Serverless based attacks (AWS Lambda / Azure & Google functions )
    • Web application AttacksGaining Entry via exposed services
  • Attacking specific cloud services
    • Storage Attacks
    • Azure AD Attacks
    • Containers and Kubernetes Clusters
    • IAM Misconfiguration Attacks
    • Roles and permissions based attacks
    • Attacking Incognito misconfigurations

Day 2

  • Post – Exploitation
    • Persistence in Cloud
    • Post exploit enumeration
    • Snapshot access
    • Backdooring the account
  • Auditing and Benchmarking of Cloud
    • Preparing for the audit
    • Automated auditing via tools
    • Golden Image / Docker image audits
    • Relevant Benchmarks for cloud

Day 3 – Defending the Cloud Environment

  • Identification of cloud assets
    • Inventory Extraction for AWS , Azure and GCP
    • Continuous inventory management
  • Protection of Cloud Assets
    • Principle of least privilege
    • Control Plane and Data Plane Protection
    • Financial Protections
    • Cloud specific Protections
    • Windows IaaS auditing
    • Linux IaaS Auditing
    • Metadata API Protection
  • Detection of Security issues
    • Setting up Monitoring and logging of the environment
    • Identifying attack patterns from logs
    • Monitoring in multi-cloud environment
  • Response to Attacks
    • Automated Defense techniques
    • Cloud Defense Utilities
    • Validation of Setup

Key Takeaways

Students will gain knowledge of attacking, exploiting and defending a variety of Cloud infrastructure. First, they will play the part of the hacker, compromising serverless apps, cloud machines, storage and database services, dormant assets and resources. Students will learn privilege escalation and pivoting techniques specific to cloud environments. This is followed by Infrastructure Defense, secure configuration, auditing, logging, benchmarks.

Students will learn preventive measures against cloud attacks, host-based defense and a number of cloud tools that can help in securing their services and resources. Apply the learning to:

Apply the learning to:

  • Identify weaknesses in cloud deployment
  • Fix the weaknesses in your cloud deployment
  • Monitor your cloud environment for attacks

Target audience

Cloud Administrators, Developers, Solutions Architects, DevOps Engineers, SOC Analysts, Penetration Testers, Network Engineers, security enthusiasts and anyone who wants to take their skills to the next level. Prior pentest experience is not a strict requirement, however, some knowledge of Cloud Services and familiarity with common command line syntax will be greatly beneficial

Student requirements

Students must bring their own laptops and have admin/root access on it. The laptop must have a virtualization software (virtualbox / VMWare) pre-installed. A customized version of Kali Linux (ova format) containing custom tools and the scripts for the class will be provided to the students. The laptop should have at least 4 GB RAM and 20 GB of free disk space dedicatedly for the VM.

What students will be provided with

Numerous scripts and tools (some public and some NotSoPublic) will also be provided during the training, along with the student handouts. Our courses also come with detailed answer sheets. That is a step by step walkthrough of how every exercise within the class needs to be solved. These answer sheets are also provided to students at the end of the class.

Trainer Biography

Scott Isaac began his journey into cyber security in the defence sector focusing on radio operations. His knowledge of radio propagation, modulation schemes, encoding and encryption methods enabled him to intercept and derive meaningful intelligence from enemy communications. Scott was later head hunted to mentor intelligence analysts operating out of Joint Signals Service Unit who were building a new internet operations capability. During this time Scott worked closely with multinational intelligence agencies and was awarded a commendation by the commanding officer of JSSU. His first civilian role was to continue to deliver training in cyber security which he did for two years as the head of product delivery for QA Ltd – creating simulated training environments to facilitate malware analysis, infrastructure attack, SOC operations and WiFi audit. He now develops and delivers training with NotSoSecure and has taught at BlackHat conferences.

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