Enumerating Cloud With Cloudfox

Enumerating Cloud with CloudFox

Legal Notice: This skill is for authorized cloud penetration testing and assessment only. CloudFox makes read/describe API calls against the cloud account whose credentials you supply. Run it ONLY against accounts you own or are authorized to test under a signed scope. Although CloudFox is read-only by design, the enumeration it performs is reconnaissance against a live environment and must be in scope.

Overview

CloudFox is an open-source command-line tool from Bishop Fox that helps penetration testers and red teamers gain situational awareness in unfamiliar cloud environments. Where tools like ScoutSuite focus on a defender-style configuration audit, CloudFox is built from the attacker's perspective: it answers questions like "what are the most attackable secrets, endpoints, and instances in this account, and what can the identity I just compromised actually reach?" It is read-only — it only performs Describe/List/Get style calls — and writes its findings to per-command CSV/TXT/loot files plus a combined report directory, so output can be triaged offline.

CloudFox covers AWS most deeply (30+ commands) and supports Azure. The workhorse is cloudfox aws all-checks, which runs the full battery of enumeration commands with sensible defaults: inventory, internet-reachable endpoints, EC2 instances (with IPs and instance-profile roles), iam-simulator and permissions for IAM analysis, principals, secrets from Secrets Manager/SSM, buckets, role-trusts (which identities can assume which roles — a core attack-path primitive), access-keys, route53, ecr, lambda, and more. CloudFox also emits ready-to-run command suggestions (e.g. aws s3 ls lines, aws ssm start-session lines) in its "loot" files so an operator can pivot immediately.

This skill covers installing CloudFox, authenticating to AWS and Azure, running targeted and full enumeration, interpreting the high-value outputs (role-trusts, secrets, endpoints), and feeding the results into attack-path planning. Source: github.com/BishopFox/cloudfox.

When to Use

• Establishing situational awareness immediately after compromising a cloud credential
• Quickly identifying internet-exposed endpoints, instances, and exposed secrets
• Mapping sts:AssumeRole trust relationships to plan lateral movement / privesc
• Triaging an unfamiliar AWS or Azure account during an authorized assessment
• Producing attacker-centric inventory artifacts that complement a defensive audit

Prerequisites

• CloudFox installed:

  # Homebrew
  brew install cloudfox
  # Go (1.21+)
  go install github.com/BishopFox/cloudfox@latest
  # or download a release binary from GitHub and chmod +x
  

• Valid cloud credentials in scope:

  # AWS — configure a named profile and verify
  aws configure --profile assess
  aws sts get-caller-identity --profile assess
  
  # Azure
  az login
  az account show
  

• A signed authorization / Rules of Engagement defining the in-scope accounts
• awscli (AWS) and/or azure-cli (Azure) installed for credential setup and follow-up

Objectives

• Install CloudFox and confirm cloud credentials
• Run full and targeted enumeration across AWS and Azure
• Identify internet-reachable endpoints, instances, and exposed secrets
• Enumerate IAM principals, permissions, and role-trust attack paths
• Triage CloudFox loot files for immediate pivot commands
• Export findings to a structured output directory for reporting

MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Workflow

1. Confirm the identity and run all AWS checks

aws sts get-caller-identity --profile assess
cloudfox aws --profile assess all-checks -o ./loot

2. Inventory the account footprint

cloudfox aws --profile assess inventory

3. Find internet-reachable endpoints and exposed instances

cloudfox aws --profile assess endpoints
cloudfox aws --profile assess instances

4. Enumerate IAM principals, permissions, and role-trust attack paths

role-trusts is the key lateral-movement primitive — it shows who can assume what.

cloudfox aws --profile assess principals
cloudfox aws --profile assess permissions
cloudfox aws --profile assess role-trusts
cloudfox aws --profile assess access-keys

5. Hunt for exposed secrets

cloudfox aws --profile assess secrets

6. Enumerate storage, registries, and serverless

cloudfox aws --profile assess buckets
cloudfox aws --profile assess ecr
cloudfox aws --profile assess lambda
cloudfox aws --profile assess route53

7. Use IAM simulator to confirm what a principal can do

cloudfox aws --profile assess iam-simulator

8. Enumerate Azure

CloudFox Azure works against the subscriptions the az session can see.

cloudfox azure inventory --outdir ./azure-loot
cloudfox azure rbac
cloudfox azure storage
cloudfox azure vms

9. Triage the loot

CloudFox writes per-command CSV/TXT plus a loot directory of pivot commands.

ls -R ./loot/cloudfox-output/
# Loot files contain ready-to-run follow-ups, e.g. aws s3 ls / ssm start-session lines

See scripts/agent.py to run a curated set of commands and summarize output files.

Tools and Resources

OPSEC and Detection Considerations

CloudFox is read-only, but its enumeration is far from silent. Each command issues many Describe*/List*/Get* API calls in a short burst, which is highly visible to defenders:

• CloudTrail records every read call. A spike of iam:ListUsers, iam:ListRoles, secretsmanager:ListSecrets, ec2:DescribeInstances, and sts:GetCallerIdentity from one principal within seconds is a strong enumeration signal.
• GuardDuty finding types such as Discovery:IAMUser/AnomalousBehavior and Discovery:S3/MaliciousIPCaller can fire on this burst pattern.
• Defenders should baseline normal API-call rates per principal and alert on enumeration bursts, especially from new IPs/ASNs or newly created credentials.

For an authorized assessment, document the source IP and timestamp of CloudFox runs so the blue team can correlate, and prefer running from an in-scope, attributable host.

Recommended Operator Workflow

1. Run all-checks once to populate the full output directory.
2. Open role-trusts first — it reveals the assume-role graph for lateral movement.
3. Cross-reference secrets and env-vars for credentials that unlock new principals.
4. Use endpoints + instances to map externally reachable attack surface.
5. Feed confirmed assume-role / privesc candidates into Pacu for active exploitation.

High-Value Command Reference

Validation Criteria

• CloudFox installed and runs cloudfox aws --help
• Cloud credentials confirmed via sts get-caller-identity / az account show
• all-checks completed and output directory populated
• Internet-reachable endpoints and instances identified
• IAM principals, permissions, and role-trusts enumerated
• Exposed secrets located and documented
• Azure enumeration run (if Azure in scope)
• Loot files triaged for pivot opportunities
• Findings exported to a structured directory for reporting
• Enumeration confirmed to stay within authorized scope