Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud-computing platform offered by Amazon, which provides cloud services such as computing power, storage, databases, networking, and automated intelligence. AWS replaces data centres, builds applications, and offers pay-as-you-go. The unique features of AWS are scalability, global infrastructure, security, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility. AWS penetration testing involves a planned attempt to

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AWS penetration testing involves authorized security assessments of cloud infrastructure to identify misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and compliance gaps. The AWS Shared Responsibility Model defines what customers can test: their own configurations, IAM policies, S3 buckets, EC2 instances, and applications—not AWS's underlying infrastructure. Testing requires following AWS policies that permit certain services (EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda) without prior approval, while prohibiting activities like DoS attacks, DNS zone walking, and protocol flooding. The process includes obtaining authorization, defining scope, enumerating services, assessing IAM roles, testing S3 access controls, evaluating EC2 configurations, analyzing network security groups, and documenting findings. Common tools include Pacu for exploitation, Prowler for compliance auditing, ScoutSuite for multi-cloud assessment, and Burp Suite for web application testing. Costs range from £3,000 to £20,000+ depending on environment complexity, with timelines spanning 3 days to 3 weeks.

AWS penetration testing: Definition, Policy Tools, and process

What is AWS’s penetration testing policy?

What tools are used to perform AWS penetration testing?

How to perform penetration testing on AWS?