AWS is among the most popular and widely used cloud platforms. It has accrued more than a million users over the years. With that much popularity and population on the platform, security is always a concern. The presence of huge loads of sensitive data makes AWS a lucrative target for hackers.
Having security measures like aws pen testing in place is a must to keep your AWS assets protected from malicious activities. However, AWS has already done its part in taking a significant amount of load off the user’s shoulders. There are internal security protocols deployed by the CSP to keep the basic-level threats away from your cloud environment. But these protocols are not effective against advanced-level threat actors.
You need to prepare your AWS infrastructure to stand strong against prevailing cyber threats. Otherwise, your data and sensitive information will always be susceptible to attacks. Going further in this blog we will explore AWS penetration testing and how it can help to protect your assets.
AWS Pen Testing
The flow of pen testing in AWS is quite like application penetration testing. The process involves simulating real-world attacks on the AWS environment. This is done with the purpose of highlighting the hidden vulnerabilities in the infrastructure that hackers might exploit.
However, AWS offers its own security controls, both manual and automated. But most businesses use a number of cloud applications on the top of AWS. This makes it difficult for these security controls to get hold of all the rising issues. Penetration testing is the only solution to counter the security issues that arise due to various reasons. These reasons include the increasing complexity of compliance mandates, data processing, and use cases while migrating to AWS.
Conventional practices of penetration testing might not always work well in an AWS environment. They are quite less likely to be in line with the AWS pen testing policies.
The key areas for penetration testing in AWS are classified into the following four categories:
- Â Configuration review of AWS cloud
- Â Testing of the external infrastructure of AWS
- Â Testing of the internal infrastructure of AWS
- Â Applications hosted and built on the AWS platform.
Importance of Pen Testing on AWS Environment
AWS cloud has a very complex structure and most often it is loaded with customer data. This makes the cloud environment susceptible to threats. The following are the key reasons that make pen testing important for AWS:
-    Client’s failure in adhering to the shared responsibility model
Security in AWS is based on a shared responsibility model. A lot of companies do not take this responsibility seriously. This leaves a security gap.
- Â Missing authentication, permissions, or network segmentation
A lot of times AWS resources are not guarded by multi-factor authentication. Plus, they provide more than necessary permissions and ignore network segmentation. In larger deployments, this becomes tricky to identify.
- Â Compliance requirements
There are multiple regulatory standards such as HIPAA, SOX, PCI DSS, etc. that the resources need to meet. Therefore, regular internal audits are important.
These three are the key factors that leave security gaps you need to fix. Pen testing comes to the rescue and does the job for your AWS infrastructure.
AWS Pen Testing Policies
AWS allows conducting of pen testing on the cloud. However, there are some policies regarding it. You can test some services without permission as well, and for some, you need to get permission. On the other hand, some activities are prohibited while pen testing on the AWS platform.
Permitted Services
These are services you can test without any prior approval from the service provider:
- Â Amazon EC2 instances
- Â Amazon RDS
- Â Amazon CloudFront
- Â Amazon Aurora
- Â Amazon API Gateways
- Â AWS AppSync
- Â AWS Lambda and Lambda Edge functions
- Â Amazon Lightsail resources
- Â Amazon Elastic Beanstalk environments
- Â Amazon Elastic Container Service
- Â AWS Fargate
- Â Amazon Elasticsearch
- Â Amazon FSx
- Â Amazon Transit Gateway
- Â S3-hosted applications
Specific areas of EC2 (Elastic Cloud Computing) you are allowed to pen test:
- Â Web applications hosted by your company
- Â API
- Â Programming Languages
- Â Virtual Machines and Operating Systems
Services that off-limits for AWS Pen Testing
- Â Physical hardware and underlying infrastructure belonging to AWS
- Â Servers owned by AWS
-  Other vendors’ EC2
- Â Security Appliances under the management of other vendors
Some other prohibited activities:
- Â DNS zone walking
- Â DNS hijacking via Route 53
- Â DNS Pharming via Route 53
- Â Denial of Service
- Â Port flooding
- Â Protocol flooding
- Â Request flooding
There are different security controls you need to test in AWS security to ensure your assets on the cloud are secure. These controls include Governance, Network Management, Encryption Control, and Monitoring.
If you adhere to all the regulations and move through the challenges smoothly, then aws pen testing is the best way to protect your AWS assets.
