Cloud attack paths in depth

Field notes on IAM privilege escalation, cross-account trust, adversarial exposure validation and continuous threat exposure management.

Comparisons October 27, 2026 5 min read

Pentera alternatives for AWS: validating attack paths without executing attacks

What automated security validation is built for, and how Pathbreak validates AWS attack paths read-only, with the fix and the confirmation, so the two fit together.

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Comparisons October 26, 2026 6 min read

Wiz alternatives for AWS attack paths: what a CNAPP answers and what Pathbreak adds

What a CNAPP like Wiz is built for, what Prowler's Attack Paths feature does, and what Pathbreak adds: validated paths ranked by blast radius, the fix, and the confirmation.

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CTEM October 25, 2026 6 min read

The CTEM validation stage in AWS, with real numbers

How the validation stage of continuous threat exposure management works in an AWS account, with lab numbers: 4,942 candidate paths and the two changes that remove 80 percent of the risk.

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AEV October 24, 2026 7 min read

Adversarial exposure validation for AWS

What AEV means in AWS, how it differs from scanning and breach and attack simulation, what a cloud AEV tool should do, and how the main vendors approach it.

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IAM October 23, 2026 8 min read

Three AWS privilege escalation attacks, with the CloudTrail evidence and the fix

Three real IAM privilege escalation chains: pass a role to Lambda, rewrite a role's trust, create an access key for another user. The CloudTrail events for each, and the change that breaks it.

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Attack paths October 22, 2026 7 min read

Attack path analysis vs attack path validation in AWS

Analysis finds the chains an attacker could use. Validation proves which ones work against your real AWS authorization. One IAM chain, taken from reachable to proven.

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Open source October 21, 2026 4 min read

pathbreak-audit: find the abusable IAM permissions in your AWS account

pathbreak-audit is a free, open-source command line tool that reads your AWS IAM and lists the roles and users holding abusable permissions and toxic combinations, with the fix for each.

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Reference October 11, 2026 6 min read

The AWS Privilege Escalation Map

Every AWS permission an attacker can chain to admin, data or persistence, with the detection that catches each one and the change that breaks the path.

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Attack paths August 11, 2026 7 min read

AWS IAM privilege escalation

The permission patterns that let an attacker climb from a low-privilege identity to admin in AWS, and how to find and break those paths.

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AWS cross-account trust and role chaining

Attack paths August 11, 2026 6 min read

Cross-account trust attacks

How attackers chain AssumeRole across AWS accounts to reach your crown jewels, and the one trust edge that breaks the chain.

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Adversarial Exposure Validation versus Breach and Attack Simulation

Explainer August 11, 2026 6 min read

AEV vs breach and attack simulation

What Adversarial Exposure Validation tests, how it differs from BAS, and where each fits in a CTEM program.

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Announcement July 18, 2026 4 min read

Introducing Pathbreak

We built Pathbreak to find the attack paths that connect all the way to admin or sensitive data, and the one change that breaks each one.

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Occasional notes on new AWS privilege-escalation research and Pathbreak updates. Unsubscribe anytime.

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