Emulating Cloud Attacks with Stratus Red Team
Legal Notice: This skill is for authorized security testing and detection-validation purposes only. Stratus Red Team spins up and modifies real cloud infrastructure in the account whose credentials you supply. Only run it in accounts you own or are explicitly authorized to test. Always cleanup afterwards to avoid orphaned, billable, or insecure resources. Unauthorized use against systems you do not control is illegal.
Overview
Stratus Red Team is an open-source "Atomic Red Team for the cloud," maintained by Datadog. It is a self-contained Go binary that programmatically detonates granular, well-documented offensive techniques against AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes, then lets you cleanly revert and remove everything it created. Unlike a full exploitation framework, Stratus is purpose-built for detection engineering and purple teaming: each technique maps to a MITRE ATT&CK tactic and ships with a precise description of the cloud API calls it generates, so a blue team can confirm whether their CloudTrail/GuardDuty/Sentinel/Falco detections actually fire.
Every technique has a deterministic lifecycle. Stratus first provisions any prerequisite infrastructure with embedded Terraform (the warmup phase), then performs the malicious actions (detonate), optionally reverts the side effects so you can detonate again, and finally cleanups the prerequisite infrastructure. Because the prerequisites and the attack are decoupled, you can iterate on a detection by detonating the same technique repeatedly without re-provisioning. The tool uses your standard cloud SDK credential chain (AWS profiles/env vars, az login, GCP ADC, kubeconfig), so it operates with exactly the permissions of the identity you authenticate as.
This skill covers installing Stratus, listing and filtering the technique catalog, running the full warmup-detonate-revert-cleanup lifecycle, mapping detonations to the telemetry they produce, and wiring the results into a detection-validation workflow. Source: github.com/DataDog/stratus-red-team and stratus-red-team.cloud official documentation.
When to Use
- Validating that a new or existing cloud detection rule (CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Microsoft Sentinel, GCP SCC, Falco) actually triggers on real attacker activity
- Building a repeatable purple-team exercise for cloud TTPs without writing bespoke attack scripts
- Generating realistic, MITRE-mapped telemetry to test SIEM ingestion and alert routing
- Measuring detection coverage of a cloud environment against a known catalog of techniques
- Onboarding analysts with safe, reversible hands-on cloud attack simulations
Prerequisites
- Stratus Red Team binary (Go 1.23+ to build from source, or Homebrew/Docker):
go install -v github.com/datadog/stratus-red-team/v2/cmd/stratus@latest
brew tap datadog/stratus-red-team https://github.com/DataDog/stratus-red-team
brew install datadog/stratus-red-team/stratus-red-team
docker run --rm -v $HOME/.stratus-red-team/:/root/.stratus-red-team/ \
-e AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID -e AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY -e AWS_SESSION_TOKEN \
ghcr.io/datadog/stratus-red-team list
- Authenticated cloud credentials for the target provider:
export AWS_PROFILE=stratus-lab
aws sts get-caller-identity
az login
gcloud auth application-default login
kubectl config current-context
- A dedicated, non-production lab account or subscription (techniques create real resources)
- Terraform is embedded; no separate install is required, but outbound HTTPS to download provider plugins on first warmup is needed
Objectives
- Install Stratus Red Team and confirm the target cloud identity
- Enumerate and filter techniques by platform and MITRE ATT&CK tactic
- Execute the warmup -> detonate -> revert -> cleanup lifecycle safely
- Map each detonation to the cloud API calls and log sources it generates
- Validate detection rules against the produced telemetry and track coverage
- Guarantee no residual infrastructure remains after testing
MITRE ATT&CK Mapping
| ID | Name | Use in this skill |
|---|
| T1078 | Valid Accounts | Emulation runs as a valid cloud identity; many techniques abuse legitimate credentials/API access |
| T1078.004 | Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts | e.g. aws.credential-access.ec2-steal-instance-credentials produces cloud-account abuse telemetry |
| T1580 | Cloud Infrastructure Discovery | Discovery-tactic techniques such as aws.discovery.* |
| T1530 | Data from Cloud Storage | Exfiltration techniques such as aws.exfiltration.ec2-share-ebs-snapshot |
| T1098 | Account Manipulation | Persistence techniques such as aws.persistence.iam-create-admin-user |
Workflow
1. Confirm identity and list the technique catalog
Always confirm which account you are about to attack, then browse the catalog.
aws sts get-caller-identity
stratus list
stratus list --platform aws
stratus list --mitre-attack-tactic credential-access
2. Inspect a specific technique before running it
Read exactly what a technique will do and which detonation/telemetry it produces.
stratus show aws.credential-access.ec2-steal-instance-credentials
3. Warm up prerequisite infrastructure
Provision the prerequisites with embedded Terraform without performing the attack yet.
stratus warmup aws.credential-access.ec2-steal-instance-credentials
stratus status
4. Detonate the technique
Execute the malicious actions; this is what your detections must catch. Warmup is implicit if not already done.
stratus detonate aws.credential-access.ec2-steal-instance-credentials
stratus detonate aws.persistence.iam-create-admin-user --force
5. Inspect status and the telemetry generated
Check lifecycle state, then pull the corresponding control-plane logs to confirm the attack landed.
stratus status
aws cloudtrail lookup-events \
--lookup-attributes AttributeKey=EventName,AttributeValue=CreateAccessKey \
--max-results 10
6. Validate the detection
Confirm your SIEM/detection fired. Example: query Athena/CloudTrail or check GuardDuty findings.
aws guardduty list-findings --detector-id "$DETECTOR_ID" \
--finding-criteria '{"Criterion":{"updatedAt":{"GreaterThanOrEqual":'"$(date -d '-1 hour' +%s)"'000}}}'
7. Revert side effects to re-detonate
Undo the detonation while keeping prerequisites so you can iterate on a detection.
stratus revert aws.credential-access.ec2-steal-instance-credentials
stratus detonate aws.credential-access.ec2-steal-instance-credentials
8. Clean up all infrastructure
Tear down everything a technique created. Always finish here.
stratus cleanup aws.credential-access.ec2-steal-instance-credentials
stratus cleanup --all
stratus status
9. Drive it programmatically for coverage runs
Loop over a tactic to measure detection coverage, then clean up. See scripts/agent.py.
python scripts/agent.py --platform aws --tactic credential-access --detonate --cleanup
Tools and Resources
Detection-Validation Mapping
For purple-team value, pair each detonation with the telemetry and detection it should trigger:
| Technique | Expected telemetry | Detection to validate |
|---|
aws.credential-access.ec2-steal-instance-credentials | CloudTrail use of role creds from a non-EC2 IP | GuardDuty UnauthorizedAccess:IAMUser/InstanceCredentialExfiltration |
aws.persistence.iam-create-admin-user | CreateUser + AttachUserPolicy (AdministratorAccess) | CloudTrail/Sentinel rule on admin-policy attach |
aws.exfiltration.ec2-share-ebs-snapshot | ModifySnapshotAttribute sharing to external account | GuardDuty Exfiltration:EC2/... / custom rule |
aws.discovery.ec2-enumerate-from-instance | Burst of Describe* from instance role | Enumeration-burst detection |
After detonation, confirm the alert fired end-to-end (source -> SIEM -> ticket). If it
did not, you have found a coverage gap; document it before cleaning up.
Cost and Safety Notes
- Some techniques provision billable resources (EC2 instances, EBS snapshots). Always
run
stratus cleanup --all and verify stratus status returns COLD.
- Never run Stratus with production credentials; use a dedicated lab account/subscription.
- The state directory
~/.stratus-red-team/ holds Terraform state — preserve it until
cleanup completes, or you may strand resources.
Lifecycle State Reference
| State | Meaning |
|---|
| COLD | No prerequisites provisioned; nothing to clean up |
| WARM | Prerequisites provisioned but not yet detonated |
| DETONATED | Attack actions performed; side effects present |
Validation Criteria
