About
In this module of the Cloud Security Engineer learning path, you practice cloud native infrastructure security against a simulated cloud environment built from real-world patterns: an IMDS metadata service, an S3-compatible object store, an SSRF-vulnerable application proxy, and an IAM/STS control plane with three distinct privilege-escalation paths. Every target runs as a Linux container on the lab network, and every command uses curl against lab hostnames. No AWS CLI is required. The environment mirrors what pentesters encounter inside cloud-hosted organizations: misconfigured storage buckets exposed to unauthenticated reads, instance metadata endpoints leaking temporary credentials, and IAM policies with overly broad trust relationships or wildcard resources. Upon completion of the module, students will be able to: • Enumerate and exfiltrate objects from publicly readable S3 buckets • Retrieve instance role credentials through an unprotected IMDS v1 endpoint • Chain an SSRF vulnerability into internal metadata access • Identify and exploit three IAM escalation paths (PassRole abuse, wildcard resources, wildcard trust principals) • Prescribe mitigations for each finding (IMDSv2, bucket policies, least-privilege IAM, SSRF input validation) For course inquiries, visit https://www.darkrelay.com/cybersecurity-course-inquiry