Code Red Scenario: Cloud Infrastructure Mass Exploitation

CloudCore Solutions: SaaS provider, 250 employees, 50,000+ customer organizations
Worm • Code Red
STAKES
Multi-tenant customer data + Service availability + Reputation damage + Regulatory compliance
HOOK
CloudCore provides cloud-based business management software to thousands of small and medium businesses. A newly discovered vulnerability in their API gateway is being mass-exploited by an automated worm that spreads between customer environments, defacing customer websites and stealing business data across their entire platform. The attack is escalating from dozens to hundreds of affected customers per hour.
PRESSURE
Customer panic and media attention - each compromised customer represents potential data breach and regulatory violation
FRONT • 90 minutes • Intermediate
CloudCore Solutions: SaaS provider, 250 employees, 50,000+ customer organizations
Worm • Code Red
NPCs
  • Sarah Chen (CTO): Managing technical response while fielding calls from panicked customers and board members, trying to balance customer communication with technical containment
  • Marcus Rodriguez (Lead DevOps Engineer): Watching infrastructure monitoring as attack spreads across microservices, struggling to contain automated exploitation in containerized environment
  • Jennifer Kim (Customer Success Director): Receiving hundreds of support tickets from customers reporting defaced websites and missing business data, demanding immediate restoration and explanations
  • Alex Thompson (Security Architect): Discovering that recent API changes introduced vulnerability that bypassed automated security scanning, realizing scope of platform-wide exposure
SECRETS
  • New API endpoint deployed without security review bypassed standard penetration testing procedures
  • Automated vulnerability scanning missed the critical flaw due to authentication bypass in the exploit chain
  • Shared infrastructure means single vulnerability affects thousands of customer environments simultaneously

Scenario Details for IMs

Opening Presentation

“It’s 2:30 PM on a Wednesday at CloudCore Solutions, and your cloud platform serves over 50,000 customer organizations. Customer support is being flooded with reports of defaced websites and missing business data. Your monitoring dashboard shows hundreds of API security alerts across different customer environments. What started as isolated incidents is accelerating - dozens of new customer compromises are appearing every hour, and the pattern suggests an automated attack spreading through your infrastructure.”

Initial Symptoms to Present:

  • “Customer websites showing hacker messages instead of business content”
  • “API security alerts increasing exponentially across customer environments”
  • “Customer business data being exfiltrated from multiple tenant environments”
  • “New customer compromises appearing every few minutes across the platform”

Key Discovery Paths:

Detective Investigation Leads:

  • API logs reveal mass exploitation of recently deployed authentication bypass vulnerability
  • Container forensics show worm spreading through shared infrastructure between customer environments
  • Attack pattern analysis reveals automated tool systematically targeting all platform customers

Protector System Analysis:

  • Real-time monitoring shows worm spreading through microservices architecture faster than isolation
  • Container security assessment reveals shared infrastructure allowing cross-customer contamination
  • Platform architecture analysis shows vulnerability in API gateway affecting all customer environments

Tracker Network Analysis:

  • API traffic analysis reveals coordinated attack pattern from multiple source IPs
  • Customer environment monitoring shows systematic data exfiltration across platform
  • Infrastructure monitoring reveals worm leveraging container orchestration for rapid spread

Communicator Stakeholder Assessment:

  • Customer communication reveals widespread panic and demands for immediate explanations
  • Legal analysis confirms data breach notification requirements across multiple jurisdictions
  • Reputation management assessment shows social media and news coverage beginning

Crisis Manager Strategic Coordination:

  • Platform-wide impact assessment reveals potential for complete customer data compromise
  • Business continuity planning for mass customer defection and legal liability
  • Incident response coordination between customer protection and technical containment

Evolution Triggers:

  • Intermediate → Advanced: Customers begin switching to competitors, platform reputation damaged
  • Advanced → Critical: Worm achieves platform-wide persistence, customer data destruction begins

Success Metrics:

  • Rapid isolation of vulnerable API endpoints
  • Effective customer communication maintaining trust
  • Technical containment preventing complete platform compromise
  • Coordinated response between technical and business teams

Learning Objectives:

  • Mass exploitation and automated attack propagation
  • Cloud infrastructure security and multi-tenant isolation
  • Customer communication during security incidents
  • Business impact of platform-wide vulnerabilities

Historical Context for IMs:

This scenario modernizes the 2001 Code Red worm, which exploited IIS buffer overflows to deface websites and spread automatically across the internet. The contemporary version translates this to modern cloud SaaS infrastructure, where API vulnerabilities can affect thousands of customers simultaneously, creating the same rapid propagation and mass impact that made Code Red significant.