Cloudsplaining

Cloudsplaining is designed to ensure least privilege in AWS IAM policies, a common oversight that can lead to significant security risks. This tool scans AWS IAM policies to identify violations of least privilege and generates a risk-prioritized report, highlighting potential issues such as data exfiltration, infrastructure modification, resource exposure, and privilege escalation.

Technically, Cloudsplaining can scan all policies in an AWS account or a single policy file, using inputs from the account authorization details file or specific policy files. It supports various scan modes, including scanning with custom exclusions and multi-account configurations. The tool outputs a detailed HTML report along with a raw JSON data file, which can be further processed to automate remediation tasks, such as opening JIRA issues or Salesforce Work Items.

Operationally, Cloudsplaining is designed for ease of use, with simple installation via Homebrew or pip, and it includes shell completion scripts for Bash and ZSH. However, managing large backlogs of IAM policies across hundreds of AWS accounts can be cumbersome, and the tool's effectiveness depends on the accuracy of the input data and the exclusions defined. Additionally, the scalability of the tool may be limited by the complexity and number of policies being scanned, potentially impacting the performance and completeness of the reports generated.

From a technical standpoint, Cloudsplaining leverages Policy Sentry for its analysis, which is based on research from Rhino Security Labs. This integration allows for robust identification of policy risks, but it also means that the tool's accuracy is tied to the quality and updates of these external resources. Overall, Cloudsplaining provides a valuable solution for identifying and remediating IAM policy vulnerabilities, but it requires careful configuration and ongoing maintenance to ensure its effectiveness.