Cloud, Kubernetes &
Container Pentesting
Modern infrastructure moves fast — misconfigurations, over-permissioned identities, and insecure workloads move faster. We test your cloud environment the way a real attacker would, and deliver everything through VETA.
Every finding manually validated with proof-of-concept exploits. Reports delivered and tracked via VETA.
What We Test & How We Do It
Purpose-built for cloud-native infrastructure.
Not retrofitted from legacy network testing.
Cloud Infrastructure Penetration Testing
Cloud environments are not just infrastructure — they're identity systems, data stores, and networking layers all collapsed into one. A single misconfigured IAM role or an exposed storage bucket can be the difference between a secure environment and a headline breach. We assess your cloud posture from the outside in and from the inside out, simulating both external attackers and compromised internal identities.
What we test
Kubernetes Cluster Penetration Testing
Kubernetes is powerful precisely because of how much it abstracts. That abstraction also creates a large, complex attack surface that most teams don't have the offensive experience to fully evaluate. We test your cluster at every layer — control plane, worker nodes, RBAC configuration, network policy enforcement, and secret management — simulating what a real attacker would do after gaining initial access.
What we test
Container Security Assessment
Containers ship fast and accumulate risk quietly. A vulnerable base image, a privileged runtime flag set months ago, or an exposed Docker socket can give an attacker everything they need to break out of container isolation entirely. We test container images, runtime configurations, and the full lifecycle from build to deployment.
What we test
Pod & Workload Security Testing
Individual pods and workloads often carry misconfigurations that are invisible at the cluster level. We go application-deep, testing the security of individual deployments, init containers, sidecars, and the network traffic flowing between services.
What we test
Real-World Threats We Identify
These aren't theoretical. They caused real breaches.
Cloud Misconfigurations
criticalPublicly exposed storage buckets, overly permissive IAM roles, unencrypted volumes, default credentials, missing MFA on administrative accounts, and open security groups are consistently the entry points.
Real-World Breach
Capital One (2019): Exposed over 100 million records through a single misconfigured WAF and over-permissioned EC2 role.
How Plaidnox Detects This
We find these before your attackers do — running over 189 configuration checks cross-referenced with manual IAM review across every cloud environment we assess.
Kubernetes Vulnerabilities
criticalAnonymous API server access, weak RBAC configurations, privileged container deployments, exposed etcd instances, missing network policies, and insecure admission webhooks are commonplace in environments that have grown organically.
Real-World Breach
Tesla (2018): An exposed Kubernetes dashboard with no authentication was used to launch a cryptomining operation against Tesla's own cloud account.
How Plaidnox Detects This
We test every one of these vectors manually.
Container Escape Scenarios
criticalPrivileged container exploitation, kernel vulnerability abuse, Docker socket mounting, host namespace sharing, and eBPF-based attacks represent real paths from a container to full host or cluster compromise.
Real-World Breach
Docker Hub (2023): Malicious images with escape exploits downloaded 100K+ times.
How Plaidnox Detects This
We don't just scan for these — we attempt actual breakout scenarios so you know what's genuinely exploitable in your environment, not just theoretically possible.
Beyond the Report
How We Help Organizations Fix and Stay Fixed
Finding vulnerabilities is only the beginning. We're invested in what happens after the report.
Prioritized Remediation Guidance
Every finding is accompanied by clear, practical remediation steps written specifically for your environment. We don't hand you a generic CVSS score and a CWE link and call it done. Our recommendations reference your actual infrastructure — your specific IAM policies, your Kubernetes configuration, your cloud provider — so your team can act immediately without having to translate generic advice into context-specific fixes.
Infrastructure-as-Code Remediation
Where applicable, our remediation guidance includes IaC-native fixes — Terraform modules, CloudFormation templates, Helm chart patches, and kubectl commands — so your team can implement fixes directly into your deployment pipeline rather than applying manual one-off changes that don't survive the next infrastructure update.
Remediation Workshop
Every cloud engagement includes a dedicated remediation workshop with your engineering and DevOps teams. We walk through every critical and high-severity finding, explain the root cause in plain terms, and help your team build a realistic, sequenced remediation roadmap. The goal isn't to overwhelm — it's to help your team understand not just what to fix, but why it matters and what to prioritize first.
Developer & DevOps Enablement
Beyond the immediate fix, we help your team understand the patterns that produced the vulnerabilities in the first place. This includes guidance on secure-by-default configurations, recommendations for preventive controls like SCPs, Azure Policy, and OPA/Gatekeeper admission controllers, and practical advice on integrating security checks into your CI/CD pipeline so misconfigurations don't reach production.
Continuous Security with VETA
All findings, reports, and remediation trackers live in your VETA account — permanently. When your team resolves findings, they're tracked. When you engage for a follow-up assessment or retest, the new report is stored alongside previous versions, giving you a clear, documented picture of how your security posture has evolved over time.
veta.plaidnox.comRetest & Validation
Once your team has remediated critical and high-severity findings, we conduct a targeted retest to confirm that fixes are complete, correctly implemented, and haven't introduced new issues. Results are published as a new versioned report in VETA, giving you a clean validation record to share with leadership or auditors.
Long-Term Partnership
We work with a number of organizations on an ongoing basis — returning quarterly, semi-annually, or whenever significant infrastructure changes occur. Cloud environments are not static, and security shouldn't be a point-in-time checkbox. As your team ships new services, migrates workloads, or expands into new cloud regions, Plaidnox can be a consistent security partner rather than a one-time vendor.
Our Methodology
Manual-first. Automation-assisted. Attacker-minded.
Reconnaissance & Asset Discovery
We begin by mapping your cloud environment from an attacker's perspective — enumerating accounts, services, publicly exposed assets, DNS records, and any inadvertently exposed metadata or credentials. This phase often surfaces issues that your internal team doesn't know exist.
Vulnerability Assessment
We combine cloud-native automated tooling with deep manual review of IAM policies, network configurations, workload definitions, and service-level settings. Automation provides breadth and consistency; manual analysis provides context, depth, and the ability to identify logic-level issues no scanner will catch.
Exploitation & Attack Chain Development
We attempt to exploit identified vulnerabilities — simulating privilege escalation, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and container escape scenarios with working proof-of-concept. Where individual low-severity findings chain together into a high-impact attack path, we document the full chain so you understand the real-world risk.
Post-Exploitation & Impact Analysis
Once a foothold or elevated access is achieved, we assess what an attacker could realistically accomplish — cluster-wide access, cross-account movement, data access, persistence establishment — so the business impact of each finding is grounded in reality.
Reporting, Remediation & Enablement
Findings are published to VETA in real time as they are validated. Final reports include both an executive summary and full technical detail. The engagement closes with a remediation workshop, and your assigned tester remains available throughout the fix cycle.
Deliverables
What Every Cloud Engagement Delivers
Executive Summary
A clear, non-technical overview of your cloud security posture, overall risk rating, and the most critical actions your organization needs to take. Written for leadership and ready to present.
Technical Report
Detailed vulnerability documentation including reproduction steps, exploitation proof-of-concept, affected resources, root cause analysis, and prioritized remediation guidance — versioned and permanently accessible on VETA.
Remediation Playbook
Step-by-step fix guidance with IaC code where applicable — Terraform, CloudFormation, Helm, and kubectl — so fixes go into your pipeline, not just into a ticket.
Risk Matrix
CVSS v3.1 scoring combined with EPSS exploitability probability and business context, giving you a prioritization framework that reflects real-world risk rather than theoretical severity.
VETA Platform Access
All reports, trackers, and version history in one place. Track remediation progress, download documentation, and maintain a full audit trail of your security posture over time.
veta.plaidnox.comRetest Included
Targeted retest of all critical and high-severity findings post-remediation, with results published as a new versioned report.
Secure Your Cloud Infrastructure
Your cloud environment is growing faster than most teams can manually review. Let Plaidnox give you a clear, expert-driven picture of your real attack surface — and a structured path to fixing it for the long term.
All assessments delivered and managed via veta.plaidnox.com