VPN

Last updated: Nov 3, 2026

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Rationale

VPN (Virtual Private Network) is the cloud-based solution for virtual private networks that Fluid Attacks uses. Fluid Attacks chose VPN over other alternatives for these reasons:

• Fluid Attacks can connect to the private networks of its clients in a decentralized manner.
• It connects directly to the AWS VPC of Fluid Attacks. Thus, other AWS services, for example, AWS Batch, can connect to the private networks of clients.
• Fluid Attacks can write its resources as code with Terraform.
• It supports AWS Client VPN. With it, the pentesters of Fluid Attacks can connect to the AWS VPC and to the private networks of clients from their local machines.
• It supports SAML authentication with Okta.
• It supports DNS resolution with AWS Route53.

Alternatives

• On-premises router: Before VPN, Fluid Attacks connected all the virtual networks of its clients to the router of its Medellín office. This method had many disadvantages. Some of the largest disadvantages were the lack of accessibility, scalability, and reproducibility.
• OpenVPN Cloud: It is a SaaS VPN solution. It did not have a Terraform module. This decreased reproducibility and traceability. It was also more complex, because it needed an integration with the AWS VPC of Fluid Attacks through stateful EC2 runners, and a connection of all the client endpoints to it.

Usage

Fluid Attacks uses VPN for these tasks:

• Connect AWS Batch to the private networks of clients to get access to their source code repositories.
• Connect pentesters to the private environments of clients to run DAST.
• Connect developers to the AWS VPC of Fluid Attacks for debugging and development.

Fluid Attacks does not use VPN for this task:

• Connect new clients to Fluid Attacks. Fluid Attacks uses the Connector for this task.

Guidelines

Accessing the VPN

You can connect to the VPN to get access to the AWS VPC of Fluid Attacks and to the private networks of clients. To connect, do these steps:

1. Go to the VPN Self-Service portal:
   • Log in with your Okta credentials.
   • If you do not have sufficient permissions, contact [email protected].
2. In the portal:
   • Download the VPN client configuration.
   • Download and install the AWS Client VPN for your operating system.
3. Open the AWS Client VPN and import the configuration that you downloaded.
4. Connect to the VPN.