AWS Penetration Testing: Beginner's guide to hacking AWS with tools such as Kali Linux, Metasploit, and Nmap

Get to grips with security assessment, vulnerability exploitation, workload security, and encryption with this guide to ethical hacking and learn to secure your AWS environment

Key Features

• Perform cybersecurity events such as red or blue team activities and functional testing
• Gain an overview and understanding of AWS penetration testing and security
• Make the most of your AWS cloud infrastructure by learning about AWS fundamentals and exploring pentesting best practices

Book Description

Cloud security has always been treated as the highest priority by AWS while designing a robust cloud infrastructure. AWS has now extended its support to allow users and security experts to perform penetration tests on its environment. This has not only revealed a number of loopholes and brought vulnerable points in their existing system to the fore, but has also opened up opportunities for organizations to build a secure cloud environment. This book teaches you how to perform penetration tests in a controlled AWS environment.

You'll begin by performing security assessments of major AWS resources such as Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon S3, Amazon API Gateway, and AWS Lambda. Throughout the course of this book, you'll also learn about specific tests such as exploiting applications, compromising Identity and Access Management (IAM) keys, testing permissions flaws, and discovering weak policies. Moving on, you'll discover how to establish private-cloud access through backdoor Lambda functions. As you advance, you'll explore the no-go areas where users can't make changes due to vendor restrictions, and find out how you can avoid being flagged to AWS in these cases. Finally, this book will take you through tips and tricks for securing your cloud environment in a professional way.

By the end of this penetration testing book, you'll have become well-versed in a variety of ethical hacking techniques for securing your AWS environment against modern cyber threats.

What you will learn

• Set up your AWS account and get well-versed in various pentesting services
• Delve into a variety of cloud pentesting tools and methodologies
• Discover how to exploit vulnerabilities in both AWS and applications
• Understand the legality of pentesting and learn how to stay in scope
• Explore cloud pentesting best practices, tips, and tricks
• Become competent at using tools such as Kali Linux, Metasploit, and Nmap
• Get to grips with post-exploitation procedures and find out how to write pentesting reports

Who this book is for

If you are a network engineer, system administrator, or system operator looking to secure your AWS environment against external cyberattacks, then this book is for you. Ethical hackers, penetration testers, and security consultants who want to enhance their cloud security skills will also find this book useful. No prior experience in penetration testing is required; however, some understanding in cloud computing or AWS cloud is recommended.

Table of Contents

1. Building Your AWS Environment
2. Pentesting and Ethical Hacking
3. Exploring Pentesting and AWS
4. Exploiting S3 Buckets
5. Understanding Vulnerable RDS Services
6. Setting Up and Pentesting AWS Aurora RDS
7. Assessing and Pentesting Lambda Services
8. Assessing AWS API Gateway
9. Real-Life Pentesting with Metasploit and More!
10. Pentesting Best Practices
11. Staying Out of Trouble
12. Other Projects with AWS

Jonathan Helmus is a penetration tester and adjunct professor with over 10 years of experience in a mixture of engineering, information security, and information technology. He resides in Seattle, WA, and works for Nordstrom as a pentester, helping Nordstrom's clients and customers execute successful penetration tests and red team engagements. As an educator, he works with various universities by teaching and educating the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. Jon currently holds a master's degree in cybersecurity with a focus on ethical hacking and pentesting, and he holds the Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP) certification. Known in the hacker community as Moos1e, Jon can be found on Twitter at Moos1e_Moose.