How do I install Cloud Audit?

Copy the stdio config for Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or VS Code on this page. It uses the publisher's install, not a PlugMCP proxy.

Does Cloud Audit need an API key?

No required environment variable is listed on this record.

What transport does Cloud Audit use?

Cloud Audit runs locally over stdio.

When was Cloud Audit last checked?

Last checked 2026-11-09. AWS security scanner with attack chain detection, IAM privilege escalation, and fixes

Cloud Audit MCP server

pip install cloud-audit

cloud-audit agent-blast --demo          # a hijacked Bedrock Agent, two threat models, one screen
cloud-audit demo --save demo.json       # a full sample scan, then explore it offline:
cloud-audit blast-radius --report demo.json --resource arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/support-bot-ticket-role
cloud-audit simulate     --report demo.json --fix aws-iam-018
cloud-audit exposure     --report demo.json

The sample account is invented. Everything derived from it (attack chains, root causes, breach cost, security graph, agent reach) is produced by the same engines a real scan uses.

With credentials, the real thing is one command and read-only. The AWS-managed SecurityAudit policy covers every check (permissions):

cloud-audit scan                         # default profile and region
cloud-audit scan --verify                # plus IAM policy-simulator proof for escalation paths
cloud-audit agent-blast --verify         # then: what your agents can reach, simulator-confirmed

agent-blast: what a hijacked AI agent can reach

An AI agent in AWS is a bundle of IAM identities: the role the agent runs as, the execution roles of the Lambda functions behind its tools, the roles of its knowledge bases, gateways and sandboxes. When the agent is hijacked, the attacker acts with those identities. agent-blast answers what that means, per agent, under two threat models:

Threat model	What the attacker has	What is in reach
Identity takeover	the credentials of a role the agent runs as (sandbox escape, metadata-service read, leaked session)	the full role: privilege-escalation methods, AssumeRole hops, data
Behaviour takeover	nothing but a prompt (indirect prompt injection through a document, a ticket, a web page)	what the agent's tools can do, bounded by the tools' own execution roles

Real output for the sample agent (cloud-audit agent-blast --demo -a support-bot):

support-bot (bedrock_agent, eu-central-1)
├── A hijacked tool (tool: create-ticket) can escalate to account admin via PassRole+Lambda
├── status: PREPARED
├── Identity takeover (attacker holds the role's credentials)
│   └── support-bot-agent-role arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/support-bot-agent-role
│       └── no escalation path; 3 reach(es) from policy grants, 1 on named resources (see Reach)
│           (risk 0/100, 1 nodes)
├── Behaviour takeover (prompt injection: the agent's tools, their roles)
│   ├── search-docs action_group_lambda -> support-bot-search-role
│   │   ├── 3 OpenAPI path(s) in apiSchema; state ENABLED
│   │   └── no escalation path; 4 reach(es) from policy grants, 4 on named resources (see Reach)
│   ├── create-ticket action_group_lambda -> support-bot-ticket-role
│   │   ├── 2 function(s) in functionSchema; state ENABLED
│   │   ├── reaches Account Takeover in 1 hop(s) via PassRole+Lambda (risk 72/100)
│   │   └── escalation: PassRole+Lambda
│   └── product-docs knowledge_base -> support-bot-kb-role
│       ├── 1 S3 data source(s)
│       └── no escalation path; 2 reach(es) from policy grants, 2 on named resources (see Reach)
├── Reach (13 action/resource pairs)
│   ├── tool: search-docs secretsmanager:GetSecretValue on
│   │   arn:aws:secretsmanager:eu-central-1:123456789012:secret:prod/db-credentials-Ab12Cd
│   │   unverified read secret values
│   ├── tool: create-ticket sts:AssumeRole on arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/ops-admin unverified
│   │   assume IAM roles
│   ├── tool: create-ticket lambda:InvokeFunction on * unverified invoke Lambda functions
│   ├── tool: search-docs s3:PutObject on arn:aws:s3:::company-backups-2024/* unverified write S3
│   │   objects
│   ├── support-bot-agent-role s3:GetObject on arn:aws:s3:::kb-product-docs/* unverified read the
│   │   agent's knowledge base
│   ├── tool: search-docs s3:GetObject on arn:aws:s3:::company-backups-2024/* unverified read S3
│   │   objects
│   ...
├── Tags
│   ├── OWASP Agentic: ASI02 Tool Misuse and Exploitation, ASI03 Identity and Privilege Abuse,
│   │   ASI05 Unexpected Code Execution
│   └── MITRE ATLAS: AML.T0034 Cost Harvesting, AML.T0040 AI Model Inference API Access, AML.T0053
│       AI Agent Tool Invocation, AML.T0086 Exfiltration via AI Agent Tool Invocation
└── Simulated, not executed: identity policies, the attached permissions boundary and SCPs are
    evaluated by the IAM policy simulator; resource-based policies of the targets, RCPs and VPC
    endpoint policies are not. Tool reach is an upper bound set by the tool's role; what the tool
    code does with its inputs is narrower.

The story the output tells: the support bot itself is harmless, but a document that tricks it into calling create-ticket runs code under a role that can pass an admin role to a new Lambda. The search-docs tool, meant to read product docs, can also read the production database secret and write into the backups bucket. Every line names the identity, the action and the resource, so the fix is a policy statement, not a debate.

The same engine covers AgentCore. For the sample gateway (--demo -a tools-gw) the headline is a cross-agent one:

tools-gw (agentcore_gateway, eu-central-1)
├── tool: crm-sync can write into agent 'support-bot' knowledge base (RAG poisoning): arn:aws:s3:::kb-product-docs/*
├── inbound authorizer: NONE; policy engine: none
...
│   ├── tool: crm-sync s3:PutObject on arn:aws:s3:::kb-product-docs/* unverified write into agent
│   │   'support-bot' knowledge base (RAG poisoning)
...
├── Coverage notes
│   └── tool 'erp-mcp' (gateway_target_mcp_server): backend identity unknown, not assessed - remote
│       MCP server; credential provider: OAUTH

What agent-blast reads (all list/get, no charge):

Bedrock Agents: the agent resource role, every action group at the DRAFT version resolved to its Lambda and the Lambda's execution role, knowledge bases resolved to their S3 data-source buckets.
AgentCore: runtime role and network mode, gateway role with authorizer, policy engine and every target (Lambda, remote MCP server, API Gateway, OpenAPI, Smithy) with its credential provider, code interpreter and browser execution roles.
IAM policies of exactly those identities (inline, attached, group), kept raw: action, resource, effect, whether a Condition is present. Conditions are flagged, never guessed. The simulator decides.

Then, per identity: the 64 privilege-escalation methods, AssumeRole hops through the trust graph, and every data, secret, lateral, code-execution and model-invocation grant matched against concrete resources. A knowledge-base bucket is always a concrete target, even behind s3:* on *, and write access to it is reported as RAG poisoning. Anything the scanner could not read (a denied region, a tool without an IAM identity) is a coverage note, never a silent pass.

--verify asks iam:SimulatePrincipalPolicy about every concrete pair, with the context an attacker really has (no MFA on the session, TLS transport), and marks each reach PROVEN, DENIED (with the policy layer that denied: SCP, permissions boundary) or not asserted. Output formats: tree, json, markdown. The MCP server exposes the same report as get_agent_blast.

A full scan

cloud-audit scan runs 110 read-only checks across 25 AWS services, correlates the findings into attack chains, ranks the fixes by how many chains they break and prices the exposure. This is the sample account (cloud-audit demo), rendered by the same code as a real scan and trimmed for length:

┌─────── Health Score ───────┐
│ 15 / 100                   │
└────────────────────────────┘
  Provider             AWS
  Account              123456789012
  Regions              eu-central-1
  Resources scanned    80
  Checks passed        14
  Checks failed        6
  Attack chains        3
  Risk exposure        $572K - $12.5M  (IBM/Verizon data)
┌───────────────────────── Attack Chains (3 detected) ─────────────────────────┐
│   CRITICAL      PassRole Escalation to Admin (support-bot-ticket-role)       │
│                 Principal 'support-bot-ticket-role' has iam:PassRole and     │
│                 can create resources with privileged roles via:              │
│                 PassRole+Lambda. The attacker passes an admin role to a      │
│                 service, then uses that service to execute code with admin   │
│                 privileges.                                                  │
│                 Fix: Scope iam:PassRole for 'support-bot-ticket-role' to     │
│                 specific role ARNs                                           │
│                 Risk: $250K - $5.0M                                          │
│                                                                              │
│   CRITICAL      Internet-Exposed Admin Instance                              │
│                 i-0abc123def456789, sg-0a1b2c3d4e5f67890                     │
│                 Instance i-0abc123def456789 is reachable from the internet   │
│                 via open security group and has admin IAM role               │
│                 'prod-admin-role'. An attacker can reach the instance,       │
│                 access IMDS credentials, and gain full admin access to the   │
│                 AWS account.                                                 │
│                 Fix: Restrict security group sg-0a1b2c3d4e5f67890 to         │
│                 specific IPs (effort: LOW).                                  │
│                 Risk: $62K - $625K                                           │
│                                                                              │
│   CRITICAL      CI/CD to Admin Takeover                                      │
│                 Role 'github-deploy-role' trusts an OIDC provider without    │
│                 restricting the 'sub' claim AND has admin permissions. Any   │
│                 repository on the CI/CD platform can assume this role and    │
│                 gain full AWS admin access.                                  │
│                 Fix: Add 'sub' condition to the trust policy (effort:        │
│                 LOW).                                                        │
│                 Risk: $125K - $1.2M                                          │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌────────────── Remediation Plan (fix 3 things, break 3 chains) ───────────────┐
│    #  Fix                             Effort     Chains   Findings  Risk Red │
│    1  Restrict security groups        LOW             1          1  $62.5K - │
│    2  Add OIDC 'sub' condition to     LOW             1          1  $125K -  │
│       trust policies                                                         │
│    3  Remove IAM privilege            MEDIUM          1          1  $250K -  │
│       escalation paths                                                       │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
┌─────────────────── Quick Wins (break CRITICAL chains now) ───────────────────┐
│ 1. aws ec2 revoke-security-group-ingress --group-id sg-0a1b2c3d4e5f67890     │
│ --protocol tcp --port 22 --cidr 0.0.0.0/0                                    │
│    Breaks: AC-01 (Internet-Exposed Admin Instance)                           │
│                                                                              │
│ 2. aws iam update-assume-role-policy --role-name github-deploy-role          │
│ --policy-document file://trust-with-sub.json                                 │
│    Breaks: AC-07 (CI/CD to Admin Takeover)                                   │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Preview a fix before touching anything. simulate removes the findings a check would fix and recomputes score, chains and exposure offline:

$ cloud-audit simulate --report demo.json --fix aws-iam-018

Simulation: Apply Remove IAM privilege escalation paths

┌────────────────────────────── Impact Analysis ───────────────────────────────┐
│   Metric                        Before                After          Delta   │
│   Health Score                  15/100               35/100            +20   │
│   Attack Chains                      3                    2             -1   │
│   Findings                           6                    5             -1   │
│   Risk Exposure         $572K - $12.5M      $187.5K - $1.9M           -85%   │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Chains broken (1):
  CRITICAL  PassRole Escalation to Admin (support-bot-ticket-role)  -> GONE

Chains remaining (2):
  CRITICAL  Internet-Exposed Admin Instance
  CRITICAL  CI/CD to Admin Takeover

Next recommended fix: Restrict security groups -> breaks 1 more chain(s)

Walk outward from any resource to see what its compromise reaches:

$ cloud-audit blast-radius --report demo.json --resource arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/support-bot-ticket-role

┌────────────────────────────────────── Blast Radius ──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Compromise of role/support-bot-ticket-role leads to Account Takeover via 2 hop(s).       │
│ Resource: arn:aws:iam::123456789012:role/support-bot-ticket-role                         │
│ Reachable: 3 | Paths to impact: 1 | Risk score: 72/100                                   │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

role/support-bot-ticket-role - IAM Role (assumed compromised)
├── Account Takeover - Full AWS admin (via grants admin, type=exploit) <high-value>
└── arn:aws:s3:::company-backups-2024 - S3 bucket (reachable via admin) (via s3:GetObject +
    ListBucket, type=data) <high-value>

Available fixes (from scan findings):
  - aws-iam-018 Role 'support-bot-ticket-role' can escalate via PassRole+Lambda (breaks chain, effort=MEDIUM)
  - aws-s3-001 Bucket 'company-backups-2024' has Block Public Access disabled (breaks chain, effort=LOW)

--format json drops straight into the open browser visualizer at blast-audit.haitmg.pl; --format mermaid gives a diagram for a wiki page. exposure ranks every node of the security graph by internet reachability and escalation:

$ cloud-audit exposure --report demo.json -n 6
   Score    Type              Label                       Why
      60    iam_role          prod-admin-role             internet-reachable
      41    internet          Internet                    internet-reachable
      41    ec2               i-0abc123def456789          internet-reachable
      41    security_group    sg-0a1b2c3d4e5f67890        internet-reachable
      20    iam_role          support-bot-ticket-role     escalation
      20    iam_role          support-bot-search-role     linked to others

What's inside

Capability	Size	Command
Configuration checks, each with an AWS CLI and Terraform fix	110 checks, 25 services: IAM, S3, EC2, VPC, RDS, KMS, CloudTrail, CloudWatch, GuardDuty, Config, Lambda, ECS, EFS, SSM, Secrets Manager, DynamoDB, Backup, Inspector, Security Hub, WAF, Bedrock, SageMaker, Bedrock AgentCore, Data Perimeter, account	`scan`, `list-checks`
IAM privilege escalation	64 methods in 9 categories: IAM self-mutation, credential access, PassRole to a service, Lambda code modification, trust-policy abuse, permission-boundary bypass, resource-policy abuse, compute hijack, lateral AssumeRole (BFS over the trust graph)	`scan` (`aws-iam-018`)
Attack chains	31 rules correlating findings and live relationships (EC2 to role, Lambda to role, OIDC to policy) into paths with MITRE ATT&CK references and a priority fix	`scan`
Root causes and quick wins	groups findings by the fix that removes them and ranks by chains broken	`scan`
What-If	before/after score, chains and exposure for any set of checks, offline	`simulate --fix`
Blast radius	forward BFS from an EC2 instance, IAM role or user, Lambda, S3 bucket or secret; JSON contract for the visualizer	`blast-radius`
Exposure ranking	every security-graph node scored by internet reachability and escalation	`exposure`
AI agents	inventory of Bedrock Agents and AgentCore runtimes, gateways, code interpreters, browsers with their IAM identities and tools; two-threat-model reach; OWASP Agentic and MITRE ATLAS tags; simulator proof	`agent-blast`
Proof Mode	`iam:SimulatePrincipalPolicy` on escalation paths (broad) and on concrete (principal, action, resource) triples (agent-blast)	`scan --verify`, `agent-blast --verify`
Threat feed	10 detectors of active abuse, each tied to a documented 2025-2026 incident pattern, versioned as a rules pack

The ten threat-feed detectors, as cloud-audit threat-feed --list prints them (rules pack 2026-Q2):

Pattern	Severity	What it catches
TF-001	MEDIUM	SES recently verified identity (phishing setup precursor)
TF-002	HIGH	Public Lambda Function URL (`AuthType=NONE`)
TF-003	CRITICAL	AWS-attached credential quarantine policy
TF-004	CRITICAL	Leaked-credentials scanner user-agent observed in CloudTrail
TF-005	HIGH	Recently-created IAM role with cryptomining-style compute access
TF-006	HIGH	EC2 or AgentCore using IMDSv1 / MMDSv1 (SSRF credential theft vector)
TF-007	MEDIUM	CI/CD role at risk of whoAMI confusion attack
TF-008	HIGH	CloudTrail tampering precursor (logging stopped or delivery failing)
TF-009	HIGH	IAM Roles Anywhere trust anchor with external CA
TF-010	HIGH	`AmazonDataZoneFullAccess` attached to a non-admin principal

Proof Mode: simulated, not guessed

Static analysis of IAM policies over-reports. Proof Mode asks AWS's own authorization engine, iam:SimulatePrincipalPolicy, which is read-only and carries no per-call charge.

scan --verify checks every detected escalation path. verified: true means the simulator allowed every required action; false means it denied one (the path is very likely a false positive); null means not asserted, with the reason in verification_detail.
agent-blast --verify checks every concrete (principal, action, resource) reach, supplies the context an attacker with stolen or assumed credentials has, and names the layer that denied.

What the simulator evaluates as of 2026-07-30: identity policies, the attached permissions boundary, the organization's SCPs including their condition keys, and the context keys you supply. What it does not: resource control policies, VPC endpoint policies, role chaining, and resource-based policies for IAM roles. cloud-audit says so on every verified line. A true proves the permission exists. It does not prove an end-to-end attack; nothing is executed.

Reports

cloud-audit scan --format html     -o report.html     # client-ready
cloud-audit scan --format sarif    -o results.sarif   # GitHub Code Scanning
cloud-audit scan --format json     -o report.json     # machine-readable, feeds every offline command
cloud-audit scan --format markdown -o report.md       # PR comments
cloud-audit scan --compliance cis_aws_v3 --format html -o cis.html
cloud-audit agent-blast --format markdown -o agents.md

CI/CD

- run: pip install cloud-audit
- run: cloud-audit scan --format sarif --output results.sarif
- uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
  with:
    sarif_file: results.sarif

--quiet exits with a code only: 0 clean, 1 findings, 2 error. Gate on severity with --min-severity high. cloud-audit diff old.json new.json --quiet exits 1 on new findings, so a daily scan catches ClickOps drift. The repository is also a composite GitHub Action (gebalamariusz/cloud-audit@v0). Ready-made workflows: basic scan, daily diff, post-deploy.

Installation

pip install cloud-audit                               # pip (recommended)
pipx install cloud-audit                              # isolated
uvx --from cloud-audit cloud-audit scan               # no install
docker run ghcr.io/gebalamariusz/cloud-audit scan     # Docker (also on Docker Hub: haitmg/cloud-audit)

Docker with credentials:

docker run -v ~/.aws:/home/cloudaudit/.aws:ro ghcr.io/gebalamariusz/cloud-audit scan

Python 3.10 to 3.13. Dependencies: boto3, typer, rich, pydantic, jinja2, pyyaml, mcp.

AWS permissions

Read-only. Attach the AWS-managed SecurityAudit policy; it covers every check, the IAM escalation analysis, the agent inventory and Proof Mode:

aws iam attach-role-policy --role-name auditor \
  --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/SecurityAudit

cloud-audit never modifies your infrastructure. simulate, blast-radius, exposure, diff, trend and agent-blast run locally against a saved scan and make no AWS calls; --verify adds simulator calls only. Regions where a service does not exist are skipped; regions where the scanner is denied a read are listed as coverage gaps.

MCP server

Seven read-only tools for AI assistants: scan_aws, get_findings, get_attack_chains, get_remediation, get_health_score, list_checks, get_agent_blast.

claude mcp add cloud-audit -- uvx --from cloud-audit cloud-audit-mcp

Then ask: "scan my AWS account and tell me what my Bedrock agents could reach if hijacked".

cloud-audit scan -R                                      # show remediation inline
cloud-audit scan --profile prod --regions eu-central-1   # profile / region
cloud-audit scan --regions all                           # all enabled regions
cloud-audit scan --role-arn arn:aws:iam::...:role/audit  # cross-account
cloud-audit scan --export-fixes fixes.sh                 # every CLI fix as a script
cloud-audit scan --categories security,cost              # skip reliability/performance checks
cloud-audit agent-blast -a support-bot --profile prod --verify

Defaults live in .cloud-audit.yml (regions, min_severity, exclude_checks, time-boxed suppressions). Environment variables (CLOUD_AUDIT_REGIONS, CLOUD_AUDIT_MIN_SEVERITY, ...) override the file; CLI flags override everything. See the configuration guide.

Documentation

Full documentation at haitmg.pl/cloud-audit: getting started, agent-blast, attack chains, IAM escalation, blast radius, Proof Mode, threat feed, data perimeter, AgentCore, compliance, and the full check reference.

Commercial support

cloud-audit is free and stays free. If you want a human on the findings, the author offers professional services:

Scanner output review (free): send your cloud-audit, Prowler or Security Hub output, get a short written review of what actually matters and what to fix first
AWS security audit: full account audit with a prioritized report and ready-to-apply fixes
AI agent access review: what your Bedrock and AgentCore agents can reach, with the policy changes to narrow it
Remediation support: Terraform and IAM changes, verified against your workloads
Palo Alto VM-Series on AWS: architecture and security review (GWLB/TGW, HA, routing)

Details: haitmg.pl/cloud-audit-support or email [email protected].

Development

git clone https://github.com/gebalamariusz/cloud-audit.git
cd cloud-audit
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -q && ruff check src/ tests/ && mypy src/

See CONTRIBUTING.md to add a check. Releases in CHANGELOG.md.

License

MIT - Mariusz Gebala / HAIT

Cloud Audit

Add this server

Host a copy with our keys and logs.

Server facts

Tools

Questions

How do I install Cloud Audit?

Does Cloud Audit need an API key?

What transport does Cloud Audit use?

When was Cloud Audit last checked?

Documentation

agent-blast: what a hijacked AI agent can reach

A full scan

What's inside

Proof Mode: simulated, not guessed

Reports

CI/CD

Installation

AWS permissions

MCP server

Documentation

Commercial support

Development

License