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Enables scanning of AWS accounts to detect security vulnerabilities and multi-step attack chains, providing breach cost estimations and remediation guidance via AWS CLI commands and Terraform HCL.

cloud-audit by gebalamariusz

cloud-audit scans your AWS account and tells you exactly how to fix what it finds - AWS CLI commands, Terraform HCL, and documentation links you can copy-paste.

47 checks across 15 AWS resource types. Mapped to 16 CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark controls. 16 attack chain rules that correlate findings into exploitable attack paths.

Five things no other open-source CLI scanner does:

1. MCP Server - ask your AI to scan AWS

The first free, standalone AWS security MCP server. Prowler and Wiz have MCP servers, but both require their paid SaaS platform ($99+/month). cloud-audit MCP works locally - zero accounts, zero API keys, zero data sent anywhere.

One command to install:

claude mcp add cloud-audit -- uvx --from cloud-audit cloud-audit-mcp

Then just ask:

"Scan my AWS account and show me the critical findings"
"What attack chains were detected?"
"How much risk exposure does my account have in dollars?"
"Show me the Terraform code to fix aws-iam-001"

6 tools: scan_aws, get_findings, get_attack_chains, get_remediation, get_health_score, list_checks. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and VS Code Copilot.

# With pip
pip install cloud-audit
claude mcp add cloud-audit -- cloud-audit-mcp

// Project-scoped config (.mcp.json in repo root - shared with team)
{
  "cloud-audit": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": ["cloud-audit-mcp"]
  }
}

2. Attack Chains - correlate findings into real attack paths

Other scanners give you a flat list of 200+ findings. cloud-audit correlates them into attack paths an attacker would actually exploit.

How it works: individual findings are correlated into real attack paths:

                    +-----------+      +----------+      +-----------+
  Internet -------->| Public SG |----->| EC2 Inst |----->| IMDS (v1) |
                    +-----------+      +----------+      +-----------+
                     aws-vpc-002        aws-ec2-004            |
                                                               v
                                                      +-----------------+
                                                      | Admin IAM Creds |
                                                      +-----------------+
                                                               |
                                                               v
                                                    +---------------------+
                                                    | Full Account Takeover|
                                                    +---------------------+
                               Detected by: AC-01, AC-02

cloud-audit scan --format html --output report.html

+---- Attack Chains (3 detected) -----------------------------------+
|                                                                    |
|  CRITICAL  Internet-Exposed Admin Instance                         |
|            i-0abc123 - public SG + admin IAM role                  |
|            > Attacker reaches EC2 > steals IMDS creds > admin      |
|            Fix: Restrict security group (effort: LOW)              |
|                                                                    |
|  CRITICAL  CI/CD to Admin Takeover                                 |
|            github-deploy - OIDC no sub + admin policy              |
|            > Any GitHub repo can assume admin AWS role              |
|            Fix: Add sub condition (effort: LOW)                    |
|                                                                    |
|  HIGH      Zero Security Visibility                                |
|            No CloudTrail + No GuardDuty + No Config                |
|            > Attackers operate completely undetected                |
|            Fix: Enable CloudTrail (effort: LOW)                    |
|                                                                    |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

Found 3 attack chains from 22 individual findings.

What others don't have

Feature	Prowler	Trivy	Checkov	cloud-audit
Individual checks	584	517	2500+	47
Attack chain detection	No	No	No	16 rules
Remediation per finding	Partial	No	Links	100%
Breach cost estimation	No	No	No	Per finding + chain
MCP server (AI agents)	Paid ($99/mo)	No	No	Free, standalone
Scan time (typical)	4+ hours	Minutes	Seconds (IaC)	Seconds

ID	Name	Severity	Component Checks
AC-01	Internet-Exposed Admin Instance	CRITICAL	aws-vpc-002 + EC2 IAM role
AC-02	SSRF to Credential Theft	CRITICAL	aws-vpc-002 + aws-ec2-004
AC-05	Public Lambda with Admin Access	CRITICAL	aws-lambda-001 + Lambda IAM role
AC-07	CI/CD to Admin Takeover	CRITICAL	aws-iam-007 + IAM role policies
AC-09	Unmonitored Admin Access	CRITICAL	aws-iam-001 + aws-ct-001
AC-10	Completely Blind Admin	CRITICAL	aws-iam-001 + aws-ct-001 + aws-gd-001
AC-11	Zero Security Visibility	HIGH	aws-ct-001 + aws-gd-001 + aws-cfg-001
AC-12	Admin Without MFA	CRITICAL	aws-iam-005 + aws-iam-002
AC-13	Wide Open and Unmonitored Network	HIGH	aws-vpc-002 + aws-vpc-003
AC-14	No Network Security Layers	HIGH	aws-vpc-004 + aws-vpc-002 + aws-vpc-003
AC-17	Exposed Database Without Audit Trail	CRITICAL	aws-rds-001 + aws-rds-002 + aws-ct-001
AC-19	Container Breakout Path	CRITICAL	aws-ecs-001 + aws-ecs-003
AC-20	Unmonitored Container Access	HIGH	aws-ecs-002 + aws-ecs-003
AC-21	Secrets in Plaintext Across Services	HIGH	aws-ssm-002 + aws-lambda-003
AC-23	CI/CD Data Exfiltration	HIGH	aws-iam-007 + IAM role S3 policies
AC-24	CI/CD Lateral Movement	HIGH	aws-iam-007 + IAM role EC2 policies

Based on MITRE ATT&CK Cloud, Datadog pathfinding.cloud, and AWS CIRT research.

3. Every finding includes a copy-paste fix

You don't just get a list of problems - you get the exact commands to fix them:

$ cloud-audit scan -R

  CRITICAL  Root account without MFA enabled
  Resource:   arn:aws:iam::123456789012:root
  Compliance: CIS 1.5
  CLI:        aws iam create-virtual-mfa-device --virtual-mfa-device-name root-mfa
  Terraform:  resource "aws_iam_virtual_mfa_device" "root" { ... }
  Docs:       https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/...

4. Built-in scan diff - track what changed

Run daily scans and compare them. See what got fixed, what's new, and what stayed the same - without a SaaS dashboard or paid backend.

$ cloud-audit diff yesterday.json today.json

╭───────── Score Change ──────────╮
│ 54 -> 68 (+14)                  │
╰─────────────────────────────────╯

Fixed (2):
  CRITICAL  aws-iam-001     root               Root account without MFA
  HIGH      aws-vpc-002     sg-abc123          SG open on port 22

New (1):
  HIGH      aws-rds-001     staging-db         RDS publicly accessible

Unchanged (8):
  ...

This catches what IaC scanning misses: ClickOps changes, manual console edits, security group rules someone opened "temporarily" three months ago. Prowler offers similar tracking, but only through their paid cloud platform. Trivy, ScoutSuite, and Steampipe don't have it at all.

Exit code 0 = no new findings, 1 = regression. Plug it into a cron job, get notified when something gets worse. See daily-scan-with-diff.yml for a ready-to-use GitHub Actions workflow.

5. Breach cost estimation - dollar signs on every finding

Security teams speak in severities. Boards speak in dollars. cloud-audit translates findings into estimated financial risk based on published breach data (IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2024, Verizon DBIR, HIPAA enforcement actions).

+---- Health Score ----+
|  42 / 100            |   Risk exposure   $725K - $7.3M
+----------------------+

+---- Attack Chains (2 detected) ------------------------------------------+
|                                                                           |
|  CRITICAL  SSRF to Credential Theft                                       |
|            i-0abc123 - public SG + IMDSv1                                 |
|            Fix: Enforce IMDSv2 (effort: LOW)                              |
|            Risk: $125K - $1.3M                                            |
|                                                                           |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------+

No other open-source scanner puts dollar amounts on findings. Every estimate links to its source (IBM, Verizon, OCC, MITRE) so you can verify it yourself.

Quick Start

pip install cloud-audit
cloud-audit scan

That's it. Uses your default AWS credentials and region. You'll get a health score and a list of findings in your terminal.

# Show remediation details for each finding
cloud-audit scan -R

# Specific profile and regions
cloud-audit scan --profile production --regions eu-central-1,eu-west-1

# Export all fixes as a runnable bash script
cloud-audit scan --export-fixes fixes.sh

Try it without an AWS account

pip install cloud-audit
cloud-audit demo

The demo command runs a simulated scan with sample data - output format, health score, and remediation details without any AWS credentials.

Who is this for

Small teams without a security team - get visibility into AWS security without buying a platform. Attack chains show you which findings actually matter
DevOps/SRE running pre-deploy checks - catch misconfigurations before they ship, with compound risk detection
Consultants auditing client accounts - generate a professional HTML report with attack chains and executive summary in one command
Teams that want CIS evidence without Security Hub - 16 CIS controls mapped, included in reports

What it checks

47 checks across IAM, S3, EC2, EIP, VPC, RDS, Lambda, ECS, CloudTrail, GuardDuty, KMS, SSM, Secrets Manager, CloudWatch, and AWS Config. Plus 16 attack chain rules that correlate findings into exploitable attack paths.

By severity: 9 Critical, 14 High, 16 Medium, 8 Low.

Every check answers one question: would an attacker exploit this? If not, the check doesn't exist.

Security

ID	Severity	Description
`aws-iam-001`	Critical	Root account without MFA
`aws-iam-002`	High	IAM user with console access but no MFA
`aws-iam-003`	Medium	Access key older than 90 days
`aws-iam-004`	Medium	Access key unused for 30+ days
`aws-iam-005`	Critical	IAM policy with Action: * and Resource: *
`aws-iam-006`	Medium	Password policy below CIS requirements
`aws-iam-007`	Critical	OIDC trust policy without sub condition
`aws-s3-001`	High	S3 bucket without public access block
`aws-s3-002`	Low	S3 bucket using SSE-S3 instead of SSE-KMS
`aws-s3-005`	Medium	S3 bucket without access logging
`aws-ec2-001`	High	Publicly shared AMI
`aws-ec2-002`	Medium	Unencrypted EBS volume
`aws-ec2-004`	High	EC2 instance with IMDSv1 (SSRF risk)
`aws-vpc-001`	Medium	Default VPC in use
`aws-vpc-002`	Critical	Security group open to 0.0.0.0/0 on sensitive ports
`aws-vpc-003`	Medium	VPC without flow logs
`aws-vpc-004`	Medium	Network ACL allows all inbound from 0.0.0.0/0
`aws-rds-001`	Critical	Publicly accessible RDS instance
`aws-rds-002`	High	Unencrypted RDS instance
`aws-ct-001`	Critical	No multi-region CloudTrail trail
`aws-ct-002`	High	CloudTrail log file validation disabled
`aws-ct-003`	Critical	CloudTrail S3 bucket is publicly accessible
`aws-gd-001`	High	GuardDuty not enabled
`aws-gd-002`	Medium	GuardDuty findings unresolved for 30+ days
`aws-cfg-001`	Medium	AWS Config not enabled
`aws-cfg-002`	High	AWS Config recorder stopped
`aws-kms-001`	Medium	KMS key without automatic rotation
`aws-kms-002`	High	KMS key policy with Principal: *
`aws-cw-001`	High	No CloudWatch alarm for root account usage
`aws-lambda-001`	High	Lambda function URL with no authentication
`aws-lambda-002`	Medium	Lambda running on a deprecated runtime
`aws-lambda-003`	High	Potential secrets in Lambda environment variables
`aws-ecs-001`	Critical	ECS task running in privileged mode
`aws-ecs-002`	High	ECS task without log configuration
`aws-ecs-003`	Medium	ECS service with Execute Command enabled
`aws-ssm-001`	Medium	EC2 instance not managed by Systems Manager
`aws-ssm-002`	High	SSM parameter with secret stored as plain String
`aws-sm-001`	Medium	Secrets Manager secret without rotation

Cost

ID	Severity	Description
`aws-eip-001`	Low	Unattached Elastic IP ($3.65/month)
`aws-ec2-003`	Low	Stopped EC2 instance (EBS charges continue)
`aws-s3-004`	Low	S3 bucket without lifecycle rules
`aws-sm-002`	Low	Secrets Manager secret unused for 90+ days ($0.40/month)

Reliability

ID	Severity	Description
`aws-s3-003`	Low	S3 bucket without versioning
`aws-rds-003`	Medium	Single-AZ RDS instance (no automatic failover)
`aws-rds-004`	Low	RDS auto minor version upgrade disabled
`aws-ec2-005`	Low	EC2 instance without termination protection
`aws-ec2-006`	Medium	EBS default encryption disabled

Export fixes as a script

cloud-audit scan --export-fixes fixes.sh

The script is commented and uses set -e - review it, uncomment what you want to apply, and run.

Reports

# HTML report (dark-mode, self-contained, client-ready)
cloud-audit scan --format html --output report.html

# JSON
cloud-audit scan --format json --output report.json

# SARIF (GitHub Code Scanning integration)
cloud-audit scan --format sarif --output results.sarif

# Markdown (for PR comments)
cloud-audit scan --format markdown --output report.md

Format is auto-detected from file extension when using --output.

Installation

pip (recommended)

pip install cloud-audit

pipx (isolated environment)

pipx install cloud-audit

Docker

docker run ghcr.io/gebalamariusz/cloud-audit scan

Mount your AWS credentials:

docker run -v ~/.aws:/home/cloudaudit/.aws:ro ghcr.io/gebalamariusz/cloud-audit scan

From source

git clone https://github.com/gebalamariusz/cloud-audit.git
cd cloud-audit
pip install -e .

Usage

# Scan all enabled regions
cloud-audit scan --regions all

# Filter by category
cloud-audit scan --categories security,cost

# Filter by minimum severity
cloud-audit scan --min-severity high

# Cross-account scanning via IAM role
cloud-audit scan --role-arn arn:aws:iam::987654321098:role/auditor

# Quiet mode (exit code only - for CI/CD)
cloud-audit scan --quiet

# List all available checks
cloud-audit list-checks
cloud-audit list-checks --categories security

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	No findings (after suppressions and severity filter)
1	Findings detected
2	Scan error (bad credentials, invalid config)

Create .cloud-audit.yml in your project root:

provider: aws
regions:
  - eu-central-1
  - eu-west-1
min_severity: medium
exclude_checks:
  - aws-eip-001
  - aws-ec2-003
suppressions:
  - check_id: aws-vpc-001
    resource_id: vpc-abc123
    reason: "Legacy VPC, migration planned for Q3"
    accepted_by: "jane@example.com"
    expires: "2026-09-30"

Auto-detected from the current directory. Override with --config path/to/.cloud-audit.yml.

Variable	Description	Example
`CLOUD_AUDIT_REGIONS`	Comma-separated regions	`eu-central-1,eu-west-1`
`CLOUD_AUDIT_MIN_SEVERITY`	Minimum severity filter	`high`
`CLOUD_AUDIT_EXCLUDE_CHECKS`	Comma-separated check IDs to skip	`aws-eip-001,aws-iam-001`
`CLOUD_AUDIT_ROLE_ARN`	IAM role ARN for cross-account	`arn:aws:iam::...:role/auditor`

Precedence: CLI flags > environment variables > config file > defaults.

CI/CD Integration

GitHub Actions

- run: pip install cloud-audit
- run: cloud-audit scan --format sarif --output results.sarif
- uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
  with:
    sarif_file: results.sarif

This gives you findings in the GitHub Security tab (via SARIF). Add --format markdown for PR comments.

Ready-to-use workflows

Workflow	Use case
github-actions.yml	Basic scan with SARIF upload and PR comments
daily-scan-with-diff.yml	Scheduled daily scan + diff to catch drift
post-deploy-scan.yml	Scan before and after `terraform apply`

Daily diff is the most common setup - it catches ClickOps changes, manual console edits, and regressions that IaC scanning can't see (because IaC scans code, not live AWS).

AWS Permissions

cloud-audit requires read-only access. Attach the AWS-managed SecurityAudit policy:

aws iam attach-role-policy \
  --role-name auditor-role \
  --policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/SecurityAudit

cloud-audit never modifies your infrastructure. It only makes read API calls.

Health Score

Starts at 100, decreases per finding:

Severity	Points deducted
Critical	-20
High	-10
Medium	-5
Low	-2

80+ is good, 50-79 needs attention, below 50 requires immediate action.

Alternatives

There are mature tools in this space. Pick the right one for your use case:

Prowler - 576+ checks across AWS/Azure/GCP, full CIS benchmark coverage, auto-remediation with --fix. The most comprehensive open-source scanner. Best for teams that need exhaustive compliance audits and don't mind longer scan times.
ScoutSuite - Multi-cloud scanner with an interactive HTML report. No releases in over 12 months - effectively unmaintained.
Trivy - Container, IaC, and cloud scanner. Strong on containers, growing cloud coverage (~517 cloud checks).
Steampipe - SQL-based cloud querying. Very flexible, but requires writing or configuring queries.
AWS Security Hub - Native AWS service with continuous monitoring and ~223 checks. Free 30-day trial, then charges per check evaluation.

cloud-audit fills a specific niche: a focused audit with copy-paste remediation for each finding, plus attack chain detection that correlates individual findings into exploitable paths - the only open-source CLI scanner with compound risk detection. If you need full CIS compliance coverage, Prowler is the better choice. If you need a quick scan that shows how findings combine into real attack paths and tells you exactly how to fix each issue, cloud-audit is built for that.

What's next

Terraform drift detection - compare scan results against tfstate
Root cause grouping - "fix 1 setting, close 12 findings"
More attack chain rules based on community feedback

Past releases: CHANGELOG.md

Development

git clone https://github.com/gebalamariusz/cloud-audit.git
cd cloud-audit
pip install -e ".[dev]"

pytest -v                          # tests
ruff check src/ tests/             # lint
ruff format --check src/ tests/    # format
mypy src/                          # type check

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to add a new check.

License

MIT - Mariusz Gebala / HAIT

cloud-audit