aws-penetration-testing

aws-penetration-testing is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from zebbern/claude-code-guide. It costs 67 tokens per session (2,479 once invoked), scanned C, original, MIT.

A guide to assessing the security of AWS environments, including identity permissions, storage, serverless functions, and cloud metadata services. AWS is Amazon's cloud platform, and penetration testing is an authorised attempt to find and demonstrate security weaknesses.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review IAM permissions, look for privilege-escalation paths, assess S3 and Lambda exposure, test metadata access, and document security findings.
Why use it?
It gives a security tester a structured scope, required access, tools, and expected findings for an AWS assessment. The work should only be done on accounts and resources the tester is permitted to examine.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/zebbern/claude-code-guide/aws-penetration-testing
Any agent
npx skills add zebbern/claude-code-guide --skill aws-penetration-testing
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/zebbern/claude-code-guide

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for aws-penetration-testing

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zebbern/claude-code-guide/aws-penetration-testing.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/zebbern/claude-code-guide/aws-penetration-testing)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/zebbern/claude-code-guide/aws-penetration-testing"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/zebbern/claude-code-guide/aws-penetration-testing.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 67 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,479 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 4 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00067 $0.02479
Opus 5 $0.00034 $0.01239
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00496
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00248

Measured 4d ago against content hash fc63d59bd1ba, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

aws-penetration-testing scanned grade C with 4 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 4d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Harvests environment variablesmediumData exfiltration

Enumerating or grepping the environment for keys collects credentials unrelated to what the mod says it does.

# 3. Extract credentials

Downgraded: this mod is about security review, or the phrase is quoted, so it is likely naming the pattern rather than instructing it.

Asks for rootlowPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

sudo mkdir /mnt/stolen

Downgraded: this mod is about security review, or the phrase is quoted, so it is likely naming the pattern rather than instructing it.

Cloud metadata endpointmediumServer-side request forgery

One request to 169.254.169.254 can return temporary IAM credentials.

http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/

Downgraded: this mod is about security review, or the phrase is quoted, so it is likely naming the pattern rather than instructing it.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

TOKEN=$(curl -X PUT -H "X-aws-ec2-metadata-token-ttl-seconds: 21600" \
Origin

Copies of this mod

3 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/aws-penetration-testing/SKILL.md · 406 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 406 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

AWS Penetration Testing

Purpose

Provide comprehensive techniques for penetration testing AWS cloud environments. Covers IAM enumeration, privilege escalation, SSRF to metadata endpoint, S3 bucket exploitation, Lambda code extraction, and persistence techniques for red team operations.

Inputs/Prerequisites

  • AWS CLI configured with credentials
  • Valid AWS credentials (even low-privilege)
  • Understanding of AWS IAM model
  • Python 3, boto3 library
  • Tools: Pacu, Prowler, ScoutSuite, SkyArk

Outputs/Deliverables

  • IAM privilege escalation paths
  • Extracted credentials and secrets
  • Compromised EC2/Lambda/S3 resources
  • Persistence mechanisms
  • Security audit findings

Essential Tools

Tool Purpose Installation
Pacu AWS exploitation framework git clone https://github.com/RhinoSecurityLabs/pacu
SkyArk Shadow Admin discovery Import-Module .\SkyArk.ps1
Prowler Security auditing pip install prowler
ScoutSuite Multi-cloud auditing pip install scoutsuite
enumerate-iam Permission enumeration git clone https://github.com/andresriancho/enumerate-iam
Principal Mapper IAM analysis pip install principalmapper

Core Workflow

Step 1: Initial Enumeration

Identify the compromised identity and permissions:

# Check current identity
aws sts get-caller-identity

# Configure profile
aws configure --profile compromised

# List access keys
aws iam list-access-keys

# Enumerate permissions
./enumerate-iam.py --access-key AKIA... --secret-key StF0q...

Step 2: IAM Enumeration

# List all users
aws iam list-users

# List groups for user
aws iam list-groups-for-user --user-name TARGET_USER

# List attached policies
aws iam list-attached-user-policies --user-name TARGET_USER

# List inline policies
aws iam list-user-policies --user-name TARGET_USER

# Get policy details
aws iam get-policy --policy-arn POLICY_ARN
aws iam get-policy-version --policy-arn POLICY_ARN --version-id v1

# List roles
aws iam list-roles
aws iam list-attached-role-policies --role-name ROLE_NAME

Read the full file on GitHub · 406 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 4d ago First seen · 406 lines · 67 tokens per session scan C fc63d59bd1ba

Subscribe to this mod's changes

aws-penetration-testing is a skill published in the GitHub repository zebbern/claude-code-guide (4,600 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 67 tokens to every session and 2,479 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 4 findings (harvests environment variables, asks for root, cloud metadata endpoint). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.