Let’s talk about three of the most interesting tools you’ll come across when trying to secure your AWS environments: Pacu, Prowler, and CloudSploit. These are go-to tools for ethical hackers and cloud security professionals, but they’re used for different purposes. If you’re new to AWS security or just trying to figure out which of these tools is best for you, here’s a breakdown of how they stack up, without getting too technical (but just technical enough!).
Pacu: The "Offensive Security" Tool
First up, Pacu. Think of this as the weapon in an ethical hacker’s toolkit. Pacu was built by Rhino Security Labs to help simulate attacks on AWS accounts. If you’re into penetration testing or ethical hacking, Pacu is your tool. It's like the AWS-specific version of Metasploit but designed for cloud environments. You’ll use it to try to exploit misconfigurations, elevate privileges, and basically see how far you can push AWS services in a controlled environment.
What’s cool about it? It’s all about privilege escalation and testing IAM permissions. Let’s say an AWS role has overly broad permissions—Pacu helps you exploit that and see what would happen if someone with bad intentions got hold of those credentials. For example, if a user with limited access is configured incorrectly, Pacu can escalate them to admin privileges. Fun, right?
Technology behind it? Pacu is written in Python, and it relies on Boto3, the AWS SDK for Python. It’s modular, which means you can load specific testing modules (like for finding keys or escalating privileges) and run them....
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