Getting Started with Stream’s CDRGoat

CDRGoat is a scenario-driven project designed to aid security teams in validating cloud detections against realistic attack paths by allowing them to practice investigating adversary techniques in safe AWS environments. Each scenario creates an intentionally vulnerable setup within an AWS sandbox, complete with an automated attack script that replicates attacker steps, enabling defenders to focus on defense strategies, such as log visibility and alert triage. The project emphasizes the importance of using isolated, non-production accounts to avoid any risks, and provides a step-by-step guide to setting up and running these scenarios, which include tasks like configuring the AWS CLI, provisioning resources with Terraform, and executing prebuilt attack scripts. By simulating scenarios like SSRF exploitation and IAM privilege escalation, CDRGoat aims to reflect the complexity of real-world cloud breaches, helping security teams test the effectiveness of their detection methods and incident response processes.