Using OWASP ZAP (and tools of the same purpose) on AWS EC2 - amazon-web-services

I am currently planning to do some web application vulnerability testing on an EC2 server with OWASP ZAP.
From my very quick google search, I found that AWS has stated that penetration testing services are allowed without approval (https://aws.amazon.com/security/penetration-testing/).
However, to double down, I am wondering if anyone in the community has done this without issue.
Thanks!!!

Yes, I frequently ran ZAP scans in AWS while I was at Mozilla. They were of course all against apps that I was permitted to test.
You should be fine unless someone complains - if they do that then Amazon are likely to send you a warning and then disable your account if you dont reply with a good explanation, or if it keeps happenning of course.

Related

Google Cloud Platform: Mining cryptocurrencies

I received an email indicating that my Google Cloud Project have been suspended because I was supposedly mining cryptocurrencies.
My project is a tool like a Calculator and that issue surely isn't possible.
What could be happen?
In order to create a function I hired a programmer on UpWork and give him access to the GCP.
Well, it seems this developer has abused our trust and did something wrong.
What can I do?
Now the project is suspended and any section I try to go in the form "Appeal" appears.
I appealed but I have to wait Google to reply.
How can I check if my project have been used for these bad usages?
I want to cut services the developer could be used or so.
Unfortunately, you must wait for Google’s reply.
AS a recommendation you could review this information to determine if it is intended, Cryptocurrency mining is often an indication of the use of fraudulent accounts and payment instruments, and requires verification in order to mine cryptocurrency in the Cloud Security Help Center.
If you believe your project has been compromised, I recommend that you secure all your instances, which may require uninstalling and then reinstalling your project, you could follow the steps.
To better protect your organization from misconfiguration and access the best of Google's threat detection, you may consider enabling Security Command Center (SCC) for your organization. To learn more about SCC visit.

Need guidance with AWS website backend

I have a website that I am trying to have the web form connect to a MySQL database running on Amazon's RDS to post and retrieve information. I'm an absolute beginner with code but have managed to get myself this far (creative3c.org). I've had coworkers and friends offer some help, but their knowledge doesn't extend to everything I was told I would need (AWS API Gateway, Lambda--anything else?).
I've been pulling my hair out for a week looking through tutorials, articles, and step-by-step guides but so many presume extensive knowledge on the viewer or they all talk about what I don't need (like phpmyadmin--and php won't work for S3 or Lambda).
Am I jumping too far into the really complex stuff? The person that told me to go the AWS route is certified and brilliant with code--but unfortunately they are fickle, busy, and aren't a good teacher to distill their knowledge. I don't know if I should have gone with something simpler. If you view the website, you'll probably understand how basic it is.
I'm stuck and really stressed about finishing this website and appreciate the help to get me in the right direction! I feel I'm so close! I'm really good at scaling up from a small example of exactly what I need--I just need that initial example!
I'm pleased to hear that you've learnt so quickly. All the terminology floating around can be very confusing. Just remember: AWS is just the platform you deploy to. It can be as simple and complicated as you want it to be
I'm not an AWS expert but here's my birdseye view
You could build an entire running website on your laptop then simply deploy that wholesale to a LAMP server that you've created up in AWS. Now you have a web application running in AWS, without using any of the AWS jargon (beanstalks, lambdas...)
Thats when you would follow this link to provision your server: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/install-LAMP.html
Or you could put the database piece of your application into RDS (a database on the cloud) then put the web application piece in a seperate web server then configure those two servers to talk to each other.
You have a web site but it's now running on two seperate machines
Or (I'm a bit hazy on this) for the web app you could instead deploy bits of your web code to lambda and stick them all together
In all cases you can apply 'elastic beanstalk' to automatically grow and shrink the computers running your site.
Like I said it can be as simple and complicated as you want it to be - and you don't need it to be complicated so the BlueHost option is fine.

Can i open a website through an Amazon Web Service?

Is it possible to open a website,like facebook.com for example, on an amazon web service?
My objective is to automate a certain task in a game and to do so without having to be online on my computer. The point is to spend less time on that game, but to not be left behind on the progress. (I'm building a bot to automate the daily tasks there, just need to know if i can now leave everything running on amazon)
Another project i want to do is to automate access to my email account and perform certain tasks depending on the emails i receive.
You get the point, i tried searching on google but i only find results about creating or hosting your own website in there and not about accessing existing websites and using automation in them.
It sounds like what you want is a virtual private server - basically a computer in the cloud that you control and is always on.
AWS have a service called LightSail for this kind of purpose. Under the hood lightsail just uses EC2, but lightsail takes away a lot of the options and configuration to provide a simpler 'click and go' kind of service.
Once you have a server you can schedule regular tasks. Depending on the complexity of your needs, you could look at using Cron as a scheduler and curl for you http requests.
For the specifics of any project you have I would suggest opening a new question with details of what you are trying to do, the reading you have done, and examples of any code you have tried.

Django website accessible to others just for testing

Right now the website is running locally and I'm still working on it.
While doing this I also have to make it visible to a specific group of users as I need their feedback in order to add/change features, etc.
I've tried to find a free web hosting without any luck (see dependencies).
I was thinking to create a VPN but then I will have to use my PC as a host for a virtual machine which is by far not what I'm looking for.
Therefore, my questions are:
1. Which is the best way to achieve this (website visibility for TESTING) fast and easy?
2. If a dedicated web host is the best solution, please point me to an easy-to-use and cheap one. What I've tried so far: elastichosts, alwasydata, stackable, 1FreeHosting and probably others I don't remember right now. For a reason or another I couldn't use none of the above.
Another aspect to be considered: I want this only for simple testing and I don't need a lot of server resources. Also the traffic will be very low as there are only 5 testers. That's why I wouldn't pay too much for it. I will probably need this temporary web hosting for 2-3 months.
Dependencies:
- as the website uses mezzanine, for the moment I only need mezzanine's dependencies.
Thanks in advance!
You can always just setup port forwarding on your router. This would allow your testers direct access to your app. Though this might give your PC more exposure than you want.
Heroku has a free tier.
In your non free options, an instance at linode costs $20/month, but requires some setup. Rackspace has similar options in their cloud servers line. Both are no contract servers.
My blogpost covers gracefully deploying a Mezzanine site. The monthly hosting cost is nothing compared to the cost of a slow, painful deployment process.
An EC2 micro-instance right now costs as little as ~US$3.50/month. I create and destroy staging servers on EC2 servers for testing and sharing with others.

AWS and Railo setup

I wondered if anyone can point me in the right direction in regards to installing Railo on AWS.
In my spare time I've put together a website to sell illustrations, but due to cost I'm unable to keep on spending money hosting it on a dedicate CF server with almost zero budget for marketing. I've been toying with the idea of setting up an account with Amazon and installing Railo.
Over the past few months I've had different advice, such as get a S3 account to host the images and an EC2 account for Railo for the website and DB with SSL, or just have S3 account where I will be able to host Railo and have my images on the same server. I'm not sure what is best and I was wondering if you can advise what you think a good solution would be.
I've read a few blogs some with good details on setups but they seem to be over a year+ old, so I'm not sure if they are valid solution any more. It's very much over my head, as I'm a developer, but I'm very eager to learn new things especially about the cloud service as it's not a common area to get involved in when working for companies. In the past I used to tag a long to server rooms and understand the infrastructure but now everything is done remotely and it's not so easy to get involved.
Any basic advice/advanced advice from your experiences of what I should follow and if you know of any good resources would be very much appreciated.
Should I get an S3 and EC2 AWS setup or will one of them do (will need DB connectivity)?
Load balancing two EC2 instances will that be hard to configure, I will need to web servers.
I just posted this very topic a few weeks ago. Should still be more than up to date:
http://blog.nictunney.com/2012/03/railo-tomcat-and-apache-on-amazon-ec2.html
HTH