This content defines the scope and rules of engagement (RoE) necessary for ethical hacking, emphasizing authorization, operational boundaries, safety protocols, and specific guidance for AI system testing. It covers in-scope and out-of-scope assets, permissible techniques, importance of authentication, communication protocols, legal considerations, and concludes with practical examples and key takeaways.
"If you're going to break things, do it with permission, precision, and a paper trail your future self would be proud of." You’ve already met the cast of characters in Threat Actors and Hacker Classes (remember our chaotic-neutral friends?), and you know the AAA basics: who gets in, what they can ...
What Are Scope and Rules of Engagement (RoE)? Scope : A precise list of what you can test, how far you can go, and where you must stop. Think of it as the treasure map with bright neon “Do Not Dig Here” zones. Rules of Engagement (RoE) : The playbook for how testing happens—timing, communication...
Scope: Draw the Box, Label the Monsters In-Scope vs Out-of-Scope (aka “Touch This, Not That”) Assets : Domains, subdomains, IP ranges, APIs, mobile apps, cloud accounts, data stores, CI/CD pipelines. People and Places : Social engineering? Physical security? If yes, specify who/where/how. If no—s...
Rules of Engagement: How We Break Things Responsibly Timing and Coordination Clear test windows (e.g., 01:00–05:00 UTC), with freeze periods for business events. Real-time comms channel (Slack/Teams) with on-call contacts. A literal safe word for emergency stop. Example: “RED-STOP” shuts everyth...
AI-Driven Twist: Special Rules for Testing AI Systems Remember our threat actors? Now some of them have machine brains—or at least machine interns. Your RoE needs AI-specific clauses: Prompt Injection and Jailbreaks : Allowed within a harness that sanitizes outputs. No uploading sensitive propriet...
Compare: Pentest vs Red Team vs Bug Bounty Engagement Type Goal Scope Tightness RoE Vibes Pentest Find and verify vulnerabilities Tight, asset-based Structured, time-boxed Red Team Simulate real adversary (often stealthy) Objectives-based Emphasis on OPSEC, detection testin...
Mini Case Study: The GPT-Helpdesk E‑Commerce App In scope: api.shop.example, web and mobile apps, staging cloud account, the HelpBot LLM endpoint, RAG vector DB with synthetic data. Out of scope: third-party payment gateway, corporate HR systems, prod customer PII, the CEO’s smart fridge. Allowed...
Common Pitfalls (and How to Not Star in an Incident Postmortem) “We assumed third-party assets were okay.” They’re not. Get permission. “We proved data exfil by exfiltrating data.” No. Use synthetic or canary data. “We tested during Black Friday because traffic looked realistic.” Please don’t. “...
Key Takeaways Scope says what’s in the sandbox; RoE says how to play in it without eating sand. Tie everything to AAA: scoped identities, least privilege, comprehensive logging. AI systems need special treatment: token budgets, sandboxed tools, synthetic data, and clear rules for prompt testing. ...
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