Abstract
The rapid advancement in cloud computing technology is continually evolving, with threat actors refining their tactics, exploiting new vulnerabilities, and expanding their influence. This dynamic environment exposes cloud infrastructure to emerging cyber-attacks, including Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), impacting both customers and service providers. Understanding the gap in APT detection literature is crucial for researchers. The research aims to comprehensively understand APTs' influence on cloud security, analyse existing approaches, emulate adversary plans, simulate attacks using Mitre Caldera, employ Snort for detection, and utilise the Nessus vulnerability scanning tool. The study addresses critical questions about APTs' exploitation of cloud environments, strengths and weaknesses of mitigation methods, impacts of successful APT attacks, vulnerabilities in cloud infrastructures, and techniques for detecting APTs. The findings underscore the intricate interplay between APT activities and cloud environments, emphasising the need for robust detection and mitigation strategies. The combination of APT simulation, vulnerability assessment, and detection mechanism analysis yields invaluable insights into the evolving threat landscape within cloud ecosystems. As organisations increasingly embrace cloud technologies, the lessons from this study contribute substantially to the ongoing discourse on fortifying cloud security against persistent and evolving cyber threats.