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Adversary Simulation

Cloud Assumed Breach

Simulate the compromise of cloud assets to assess your organisation's ability to detect, contain, and mitigate cloud-based threats.

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Objective
Cloud breach containment
Maturity
Established cloud estate
Approach
Compromised cloud identity
Result
IAM and attack-path findings

Testing resilience in cloud environments

Cloud environments introduce unique attack paths that differ from traditional on-premises infrastructure. Adversaries leverage identity-based attacks, misconfigured resources, insecure APIs, and over-permissioned accounts to move laterally and escalate privileges within cloud platforms.

SilentGrid's Cloud Assumed Breach simulates post-compromise scenarios, starting from the premise that an adversary has already gained initial cloud access. The objective is to test your detection, response, and mitigation capabilities against internal cloud threats and identity-based compromises across AWS, Azure, GCP, and multi-cloud environments.

Why cloud assumed breach is critical

While cloud providers offer robust security features, misconfigurations, poor visibility, and excessive trust relationships remain key entry points for attackers.

Identity is the new perimeter

A single compromised identity can lead to widespread breach

Cloud misconfigurations

Remain the leading cause of cloud breaches

Over-permissioned accounts

Allow attackers to move laterally across environments

Poor visibility

In cloud environments, hampers detection and response

Is cloud assumed breach the right fit?

The simulation begins with cloud access already in an attacker's hands, so it suits organisations whose critical workloads and identities live in the cloud. Where on-premises networks are the environment under question, assumed breach testing covers that ground instead.

Cloud assumed breach fits organisations that

  • Operate heavily in AWS, Azure, GCP, or multi-cloud environments
  • Need to test the effectiveness of cloud-native security controls
  • Want to validate identity and access management (IAM) security
  • Seek to simulate post-compromise scenarios and lateral movement risks

Our cloud testing methodology

SilentGrid leverages real-world adversary tactics specific to cloud environments, simulating attackers operating within compromised cloud accounts.

  1. 01

    Establishing initial foothold

    • Simulate compromised access keys, service tokens, or OAuth tokens
    • Insider threat scenarios with existing cloud credentials
    • Compromised developer accounts or stolen API keys
  2. 02

    Privilege escalation and lateral movement

    • Abuse IAM policies, trust relationships, and role assumption paths
    • Identify over-permissioned roles and misconfigured service identities
    • Exploit serverless functions, containers, and Kubernetes clusters
  3. 03

    Resource discovery and data exfiltration

    • Enumerate storage buckets, databases, and critical assets
    • Test for publicly exposed resources and data leaks
    • Simulate data exfiltration while bypassing logging and monitoring
  4. 04

    Persistence testing

    • Create rogue IAM roles, long-lived tokens, and shadow infrastructure
    • Evaluate visibility in cloud monitoring solutions (CloudTrail, Azure Monitor, GCP Logging)
  5. 05

    Incident response validation

    • Trigger alerts through controlled exploitation to test SOC and IR workflows
    • Evaluate effectiveness of SIEM, CSPM, and EDR tools for cloud attacks

Key attack scenarios simulated

We replicate the latest cloud attack techniques used by adversaries:

Cloud credential harvesting

Testing for credential leaks, unprotected environment variables, and insecure repositories

IAM privilege escalation

Simulating abuse of role chaining, misconfigured trust policies, and role assumption paths

Cloud lateral movement

Exploiting cloud-native services, containers, and serverless functions for pivoting

Data breach simulation

Testing for open storage buckets, misconfigured databases, and exfiltration paths

Serverless and API exploitation

Targeting Lambda functions, API gateways, and microservices to expand access

Multi-cloud attack paths

Testing cross-cloud attack scenarios in hybrid and multi-cloud environments

Key benefits

Expose cloud-specific attack paths

Test for misconfigurations, unprotected APIs, and privilege escalation paths unique to cloud

Validate cloud security posture

Assess how well your cloud configurations defend against identity-based threats

Enhance incident response

Improve cloud SOC workflows, alerting pipelines, and incident containment strategies

Continuous improvement

Receive iterative feedback and re-testing to ensure vulnerabilities are fully addressed

Run it continuously

Test the cloud once, or all year.

A single cloud assumed breach traces where one compromised identity leads across AWS, Azure or GCP. Where roles and workloads change faster than an annual test can track, CAOS (Continuous Adversary Operations Service) runs adversary cycles through the year and tests new exposure.

Explore CAOS

Deliverables and reporting

Our Cloud Assumed Breach engagements provide actionable insights into cloud security risks:

Attack path documentation

Detailed breakdown of attack paths, privilege escalation, and exploited misconfigurations

Cloud IAM analysis

Identifying over-permissioned accounts, misaligned roles, and unnecessary privileges

Persistence techniques report

Demonstrations of how adversaries establish long-term access in cloud environments

Incident response recommendations

Strategic guidance to improve cloud logging, monitoring, and detection rules

Why SilentGrid

SilentGrid's consultants are hand-picked, and between them they have delivered red team engagements globally over decades, including CBEST for UK financial institutions and CORIE engagements in Australia. Their sector experience covers banking and financial services, insurance, government, critical infrastructure and healthcare.

Consultants find 0-day vulnerabilities in commercial software and speak or teach at security conferences. That research produces the custom tooling used to bypass EDR and network controls, and keeps techniques current with the threat actor being simulated. The methodology follows concepts set out in NIST, OWASP, PTES and OSSTMM.

CREST ANZApproved company

Individual credentials across our team include

  • OSEE
  • OSCE3
  • OSED
  • OSEP
  • OSWE
  • GXPN
  • CRTO
  • CRTE
  • CRTP
  • OSCP
Meet the team

Common questions

What is a cloud assumed breach?

A cloud assumed breach tests a cloud estate the way an attacker holding stolen cloud access would: it starts from compromised access keys, tokens or a developer account in AWS, Azure or GCP, then abuses IAM policies, trust relationships and over-permissioned roles to reach data, while measuring what CloudTrail, Azure Monitor, GCP Logging and your SOC detect.

Which cloud platforms do you test?

AWS, Azure and GCP, including hybrid and multi-cloud environments where cross-cloud attack paths are tested in their own right.

Where does the simulation start?

From a simulated compromise of access keys, service tokens or OAuth tokens, an insider scenario using existing cloud credentials, or a compromised developer account or stolen API key.

What does the testing cover?

Identity through to data: IAM policies, trust relationships and role assumption paths, over-permissioned roles and misconfigured service identities, serverless functions, containers and Kubernetes clusters, and storage buckets, databases and other critical assets.

Our cloud provider secures the platform. Why is this needed?

Cloud providers offer robust security features, but misconfigurations, poor visibility and excessive trust relationships remain key entry points for attackers, and those sit on the customer side of the platform.

Does the exercise test detection and response?

Yes. Alerts are triggered through controlled exploitation to test SOC and IR workflows, and the effectiveness of SIEM, CSPM and EDR tooling for cloud attacks is evaluated, along with visibility in CloudTrail, Azure Monitor and GCP Logging.

What do we receive at the end?

Attack path documentation covering privilege escalation and the misconfigurations exploited, a cloud IAM analysis, a persistence techniques report, and incident response recommendations for cloud logging, monitoring and detection rules.

Secure your cloud infrastructure

Get started with cloud assumed breach

Expose cloud vulnerabilities before real attackers do

Our cloud-focused adversary simulations help you identify and fix critical security gaps in your cloud environments.

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