Penetration Testing & Attack Simulation
NodeZero
Autonomous penetration testing platform that discovers, chains, and verifies exploitable attack paths across internal networks, cloud, and Active Directory without agents.
NodeZero Overview
NodeZero is an Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV) platform that executes autonomous, agentless penetration tests in production environments without causing downtime or deploying persistent agents. Its core mechanism is exploit chain synthesis: the platform sequences individual weaknesses (CVEs, misconfigurations, exposed credentials, and policy gaps) into end-to-end attack paths that replicate real attacker behavior across internal networks, cloud environments, Active Directory, and Kubernetes clusters, then generates verified proof-of-exploitation evidence for each chained path.
NodeZero deploys via Docker container or OVA for internal tests and ephemeral Horizon3.ai cloud infrastructure for external tests, leaving no persistent agents on the network. The platform performs OSINT-driven reconnaissance and autonomous network traversal, then sequences discovered CVEs, misconfigurations, and credential weaknesses into attack chains without predefined scripts, stopping when it reaches proof-of-exploitation or exhausts available paths. Each operation produces diagrammed attack paths, prioritized remediation guidance with systemic fix identification, and a Quick Verify function that re-tests specific weaknesses after remediation. The NSA Continuous Autonomous Penetration Testing (CAPT) program, covering 500-plus Defense Industrial Base participants, runs on NodeZero.
FedRAMP High Authorized under the FedHIVE package (ID: FR1802451335), NodeZero Federal is deployable through the Department of War's Platform One Marketplace. Horizon3.ai holds a 4.7-star rating on Gartner Peer Insights and is ranked #1 in Security on Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies and #4 in Security on Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies. The platform serves over 5,200 customers across government, financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing, including four of the Fortune 10.
Key Capabilities
mapped to solution nichesDynamically discovers and chains exposures (unpatched CVEs, misconfigurations, and credential weaknesses) into multi-step exploit paths without predefined scripts, sequencing weaknesses in the order an attacker would based on live environment state.
Safely exploits discovered weaknesses to produce empirical evidence of exploitability for each finding, replacing theoretical vulnerability data with confirmed attack outcomes and reducing false positives.
Executes cloud-specific attack techniques including IAM privilege escalation, SSRF to metadata services, storage bucket enumeration, and cross-account role assumption to surface cloud exploit paths.
Runs attack technique sequences on a scheduled or continuous basis against production controls, surfacing control drift between point-in-time assessments without human intervention.
Ranks remediation by the impact of validated attack paths and blast radius rather than raw CVSS scores, directing effort toward the weaknesses that actually enable compromise.
Re-tests specific validated weaknesses after remediation to confirm each fix closed the attack path, closing the validation loop between testing and remediation.
Compliance
certificationsIntegrations
compatible toolsImplementation & support
Info last updated on June 12, 2026