How to Use Atomic Red Team for MITRE ATT&CK-Based Threat Testing

In today’s evolving cybersecurity landscape, one of the most effective ways to test, measure, and improve your security detection capabilities is by simulating real-world attack techniques in a safe, controlled, and repeatable manner. Atomic Red Team provides exactly that, a lightweight, modular, and highly transparent framework to emulate adversarial behavior as mapped by the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

This blog is a comprehensive and developer-focused guide on how to use Atomic Red Team to perform MITRE ATT&CK-based threat testing. We’ll explore the key benefits, developer advantages, test setup, execution flow, real-world use cases, and how it compares to traditional red teaming and penetration testing methods.

Our main keyword focus is Atomic Red Team, and we will also integrate supporting keywords like MITRE ATT&CK testing, Invoke-Atomic, atomic-operator, security detection validation, lightweight attack simulation, threat emulation for developers, DevSecOps threat testing, and more throughout this guide.

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What Is Atomic Red Team and Why It Matters for Security Engineers

A practical tool for security validation

Atomic Red Team is an open-source project initiated by Red Canary to provide small, self-contained test scripts, called “atomics”, that execute a single technique aligned with a specific MITRE ATT&CK technique. The goal is to enable defenders, engineers, and security operations teams to safely emulate real adversary behavior and validate their detection mechanisms.

These atomic tests are crafted to be simple to understand, easy to execute, and repeatable. Developers and security engineers don’t need to orchestrate complex attack simulations or use red team resources to validate defenses. With minimal dependencies, a single script or command can simulate tactics like credential dumping, lateral movement, or privilege escalation.

This democratizes threat emulation, making it accessible not just to red teamers but also to blue teamers, purple teamers, and software engineers integrating security early in the development lifecycle.

The alignment with MITRE ATT&CK

The MITRE ATT&CK (Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge) framework provides a comprehensive matrix of real-world tactics and techniques used by attackers. Each test in the Atomic Red Team repository directly maps to a technique ID from this framework, like T1059 (Command and Scripting Interpreter) or T1003 (Credential Dumping). This direct mapping allows organizations to track their detection coverage, simulate specific threat actors, and close visibility gaps across different stages of the attack lifecycle.

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Advantages Over Traditional Threat Testing Tools

A lightweight yet powerful simulation framework

Compared to traditional red team exercises or commercial breach and attack simulation (BAS) platforms, Atomic Red Team provides numerous benefits, especially for developers, DevSecOps practitioners, and security engineers:

• Minimal setup and zero vendor dependency: You don’t need complex infrastructure, agents, or paid tools. Clone the GitHub repo, run a test, done. It’s truly lightweight.
  
  
• Highly modular tests: Each atomic focuses on one tactic or technique. This granularity makes it easier to pinpoint blind spots, build targeted detections, and avoid noise.
  
  
• Fast execution: Most tests can be executed in under five minutes, making them ideal for CI/CD environments, pre-deployment validation, or automated daily threat exercises.
  
  
• Scripting and automation: Whether you're writing bash scripts or PowerShell automation, you can easily invoke tests and chain them together.
  
  
• Cross-platform compatibility: The framework supports Windows, Linux, macOS, and now cloud platforms too, making it ideal for testing hybrid infrastructure.
  
  
• Community-maintained and open-source: Constantly updated by a vibrant community, the test suite remains fresh with recent attack techniques, especially those linked to known APT groups.
  
  

Getting Started: How to Use Atomic Red Team in Your Environment

Step 1: Cloning the repository

The first step is to clone the official Atomic Red Team GitHub repository:

git clone https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team.git

cd atomic-red-team

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This repository contains atomic test YAML files categorized by MITRE ATT&CK techniques. These include instructions, command-line test cases, platform compatibility, required prerequisites, and cleanup steps.

Step 2: Installing an execution framework

There are two primary ways to run tests:

• Invoke-Atomic (PowerShell-based, ideal for Windows environments):
  This script simplifies test execution by allowing you to run atomic tests with a single command. It takes care of downloading test files, executing payloads, and cleaning up.
  
  
• atomic-operator (Python-based, cross-platform):
  Ideal for Linux, macOS, and remote execution. It provides JSON-formatted output, supports batch testing, and is better suited for integrating into Python pipelines or containerized environments.
  
  

Step 3: Exploring available atomic tests

To view available tests:

• Using Invoke-Atomic:
  Invoke-AtomicTest ALL -ShowDetailsBrief
• Using atomic-operator:
  atomic-operator list

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You’ll see all supported techniques, a short description, and the platform it targets.

Step 4: Choosing a specific MITRE ATT&CK technique

Each atomic maps to a technique ID. For example:

• T1112 – Modify Registry (persistence)
  
  
• T1059.001 – PowerShell Execution (execution)
  
  
• T1082 – System Information Discovery (reconnaissance)
  
  

You can focus on techniques relevant to your organization’s threat model or compliance requirements.

Step 5: Viewing test details

Every atomic test includes:

• Commands to execute
  
  
• Required input arguments (if any)
  
  
• Description of what the test does
  
  
• Cleanup commands to restore state
  
  

Example for T1059.001 (PowerShell Execution):

Invoke-AtomicTest T1059.001

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This will display the script, preconditions, and how to run the test.

Step 6: Running the test

Running a test is as simple as: Invoke-AtomicTest T1082

Or using the Python version: atomic-operator run T1082

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Observe logs, alerts, and detection telemetry in your SIEM or EDR tool. You’re looking to verify whether your security tooling detects the simulated activity.

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Real-World Use Case: Network Share Discovery (T1135)

Let’s walk through a practical use case where a DevSecOps team wants to validate their detection rules for T1135 - Network Share Discovery.

• The team runs:
  Invoke-AtomicTest T1135 -TestNumbers 2
• This simulates an adversary scanning for SMB shares.
• They monitor their detection platform (like Splunk, Sentinel, or Elastic).
• If no detection is triggered, they use this as a signal to write a new rule, enable additional logging (e.g., Sysmon), or enhance their alerting thresholds.
  
  

This simple but powerful exercise reveals a detection gap and gives engineers the opportunity to patch it proactively, before a real attack occurs.

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How Developers Benefit from Atomic Red Team

Developer-first advantages

Security testing is no longer just the responsibility of infosec teams. Modern DevSecOps practices demand that developers are empowered with tools to assess the security posture of the code they ship. Atomic Red Team aligns beautifully with this mindset:

• Integrate with CI/CD pipelines: You can trigger atomic tests as a stage in Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or GitLab CI to verify that a change hasn’t broken detection logic.
  
  
• Low learning curve: Developers don’t need prior red teaming experience. The YAML structure, pre-defined test cases, and cleanup steps are developer-friendly.
  
  
• Code-close validation: Developers can test techniques immediately after building logging or EDR capabilities into their services.
  
  
• Custom tests: Atomic Red Team supports adding your own tests. Engineers can write YAML test cases that mimic attacks relevant to their stack.
  
  
• Quick feedback loop: Instead of waiting for quarterly pentests, teams get instant insights and remediation paths.
  

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Atomic vs. Traditional Red Teaming: Why It’s Better for Developers

Comparison from a developer’s perspective

Traditional red teaming exercises involve highly skilled adversaries simulating attacks, often in stealth mode. While valuable, they’re costly, time-consuming, and don’t always reveal gaps in a format actionable to developers.

Atomic Red Team fills this gap:

• Speed and frequency: Run tests anytime, anywhere, as often as needed.
  
  
• Clear scope: Each atomic focuses on a single technique, allowing focused detection and response.
  
  
• Easier interpretation: Developers get immediate signal if their detection works or fails, no need to decode red team postmortems.
  
  
• No environment disruption: Unlike red team simulations that can trip alarms or affect production systems, atomic tests are safe and scoped.
  
  

Pro Tips and Best Practices for Using Atomic Red Team

Make the most of your testing workflow

• Start with detection-rich techniques: Execution (T1059), credential access (T1003), and discovery (T1082) give fast feedback loops.
  
  
• Always validate your telemetry: Make sure Windows Event Logs, Sysmon, or cloud logs are capturing the activity. If not, update your audit policy.
  
  
• Automate cleanup: Many tests include cleanup_command fields, use them to maintain hygiene.
  
  
• Use ATT&CK Navigator: Map test results visually using this MITRE tool and identify coverage gaps across your environment.
  
  
• Track progress in version control: Store test configs, results, and response actions in Git for audit and transparency.
  
  

Deep Dive: Automating Atomic Tests with atomic-operator

Use YAML-driven batch execution

The atomic-operator Python framework allows developers to run multiple atomic tests on one or more systems using configuration files.

Sample YAML:

techniques:

  - T1059

  - T1082

  - T1003

targets:

  - 192.168.1.20

  - 192.168.1.21

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Then run:

atomic-operator run --config config.yaml

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This makes it ideal for fleet-wide detection validation, ensuring uniform security posture across all environments.

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Final Thoughts

Atomic Red Team brings transparency, portability, and speed to threat simulation. By focusing on individual MITRE ATT&CK techniques, it allows developers, security engineers, and detection teams to collaborate effectively, improve coverage, and validate defenses continuously. With frameworks like Invoke-Atomic and atomic-operator, anyone can start running realistic, safe, and repeatable threat simulations with just a few commands, whether locally, in the cloud, or across the enterprise.

If you're serious about improving detection engineering and shifting security left in your software development process, Atomic Red Team is the tool you need.