Security teams have invested years learning to find misconfigurations. The harder question -- the one most tools do not answer -- is what an attacker can actually do with them.
An open SSH port is a misconfiguration. An open SSH port on a VM with an exploitable CVE, attached to a service account with broad access to a project containing a production database -- that is an attack path. The difference between the two is the difference between a finding and a breach.
Why Individual Findings Are Not Enough
Cloud security tools excel at producing lists. They scan your infrastructure and tell you everything that deviates from a benchmark: open ports, missing encryption, overly permissive IAM policies, unpatched software.
What they rarely do is connect the dots.
Attackers do not exploit a single misconfiguration in isolation. They chain together a sequence of weaknesses, each one giving them slightly more access, until they reach something valuable:
- Find an entry point (public-facing service with a vulnerability)
- Gain initial access (exploit the vulnerability)
- Escalate privileges (misconfigured IAM, overly broad service account)
- Move laterally (network access between services, cross-project permissions)
- Reach the target (database, storage bucket, secrets manager)
Each step might correspond to a "medium" severity finding in a traditional tool. Individually, none look urgent. Together, they form a complete path to your most sensitive data.
How VikingCloud Traces Attack Paths
After every scan, VikingCloud's Exposure Analyst traces these paths automatically.
Identifies entry points. The platform queries your infrastructure for internet-facing assets: public VMs, load balancers, container services, ingress controllers, storage with public access, databases with public IPs.
Traces IAM chains. Using effective IAM bindings collected during the scan, VikingCloud maps what each principal can access. This includes direct role assignments, inherited permissions from organizational hierarchies, and service account impersonation chains. Compromising a VM does not just give an attacker the VM -- it gives them everything the attached service account can reach.
Cross-references vulnerabilities. Every resource on the path is checked for known CVEs, filtered by exploit probability and whether the vulnerability is actively exploited in the wild. A theoretical path through a patched service is less concerning than a path through a service with a high-probability exploit.
Maps to MITRE ATT&CK. Each step in the attack path is tagged with the corresponding MITRE ATT&CK technique -- Initial Access, Privilege Escalation, Lateral Movement, Credential Access. This gives security teams a shared vocabulary and connects findings to known attacker tradecraft.
Identifies choke points. For each path, VikingCloud identifies the single change that breaks the entire chain. Rather than fixing five separate findings, you fix one, and the attack path ceases to exist.
What You See on the Exposure Page
The Exposure page shows two things:
Entry points. Every internet-facing asset in your environment, grouped by type. This answers: "What can an attacker see from outside?"
Attack paths. For each entry point, the full chain to your most valuable assets -- databases, secrets, storage containing sensitive data. Each path is visualized as an interactive graph with risk scores and MITRE ATT&CK mappings.
Click any path to see the full chain, the remediation steps, and copy-pasteable commands specific to your resources.
Cross-Account, Cross-Cloud
Attack paths do not stop at project boundaries. An attacker who compromises a service in one project may use cross-project IAM bindings to access resources in another.
VikingCloud traces paths across multiple cloud accounts and projects. IAM bindings are collected from every connected account and analyzed together. If a service account in your development project has access to your production project, VikingCloud surfaces that path -- even though no single-project scan would find it.
Consistency Through Fingerprinting
Attack paths that appear and disappear between scans erode trust. VikingCloud uses a fingerprinting system to maintain stability: each path is identified by its entry point and target combination. Existing paths persist across scans as long as the data supports them. New paths appear only when genuinely new chains are discovered. Removed paths are archived with an explicit reason.
Your security team can track paths over time, verify that remediations worked, and maintain an accurate view of exposure without chasing phantom alerts.
The Bottom Line
Finding misconfigurations is table stakes. Understanding how those misconfigurations chain together into actual attack scenarios is where security starts. VikingCloud does this automatically after every scan -- no manual correlation required.
Start your free trial and see the attack paths in your environment.