Woodpecker: Open-source red teaming for AI, Kubernetes, APIs - Help Net Security

Woodpecker is an open-source tool that automates red teaming, making advanced security testing easier and more accessible. It helps teams find and fix security weaknesses in AI systems, Kubernetes environments, and APIs before attackers can exploit them.

Key features of Woodpecker

“We noticed recently that a number of companies are now selling red-teaming features as commercial products, so we wanted to democratize access to core red teaming capabilities that we don’t think should be limited to only the biggest companies with huge security budgets. Woodpecker democratizes security testing by making comprehensive, automated red teaming capabilities across APIs, Kubernetes, and LLMs accessible to organizations of all sizes, helping them proactively identify vulnerabilities across their entire stack, not just bits and pieces, before malicious actors can exploit them,” Dr. Priyanka Tembey, CTO of Operant AI, told Help Net Security.

Woodpecker provides automated red teaming capabilities across three domains:

• Kubernetes security: Identifies misconfigurations, privilege escalations, and vulnerable deployment patterns within container orchestration environments.
• API security: Simulate various attack scenarios to uncover vulnerabilities in API endpoints, authentication mechanisms, and data handling processes.
• AI security: Tests machine learning models and AI systems for prompt injection, data poisoning, and other emerging AI-specific attack vectors.

“What truly sets Woodpecker apart is its comprehensive approach to security testing across multiple domains. Unlike solutions focusing on a single layer, Woodpecker provides automated red teaming capabilities across three critical areas: Kubernetes security, API security, and AI security, simulating over 50% of OWASP top 10 threats and exceeding the scope of leading commercial products,” Tembey explained.

“Woodpecker’s compliance coverage across threat vectors for OWASP Top 10 for K8s, API, and AI, MITRE ATLAS, and NIST is also particularly valuable in helping security teams translate the results into business priorities, regardless of which compliance frameworks their company prefers to use,” Tembey added.

Future plans and download

“Our aim with Woodpecker is to harness the collective expertise of the security community to improve the tool, provide transparency in how security testing is conducted, and create a common foundation for security testing that can evolve with emerging threats. This collaborative approach will help the tool grow to address new challenges as they emerge across AI, APIs, and Kubernetes environments,” Tembey concluded.

Woodpecker is available for free on GitHub.

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