Silicon Valley-headquartered Operant AI has launched Woodpecker, an open-source, automated red teaming engine to make advanced security testing accessible to organisations. Woodpecker is designed to help organisations detect and address security vulnerabilities across AI systems, Kubernetes environments, and application programming interfaces.
What Is Red Teaming?
Red teaming is a simulated cyberattack used to test and improve an organisation's cybersecurity readiness. It involves ethical hackers emulating real-world adversaries to uncover vulnerabilities and assess how effectively defences can detect, respond to, and mitigate threats.
Traditionally, such sophisticated security testing is reserved for large enterprises, but has now become vital for organisations of all sizesāespecially as modern infrastructure grows more complex with the rise of cloud-native applications and AI.
āSecurity vulnerabilities don't discriminate based on an organisation's size or resources, we believe red teaming should not be a privilege for a few, it should be a foundational practice for all,ā said Vrajesh Bhavasar, CEO and co-founder of Operant AI. "With Woodpecker, we're levelling the playing field by providing enterprise-grade red teaming capabilities in an open source solution that any organization can deploy."
Woodpecker Addresses Modern Cyber Threats
Threats such as prompt injection, data poisoning, and model leakage continue to rise, yet only 24% of generative AI projects are currently secured, according to an IBM report. A DSCIāSeqrite report also underscores the complexity of attacks, with 62% of malware detections occurring in cloud environments. Advanced threats like BlackMamba, a generative AI-powered malware, are bypassing traditional defences, targeting critical sectors such as healthcare and BFSI.
According to Operant AI, Woodpecker is built to address these modern threats targeting AI applications, cloud APIs, and Kubernetes environments and is designed to mimic how real attackers operate across multiple layers of infrastructure.
Woodpecker provides automated red teaming capabilities across three critical domains:
Kubernetes Security: Identifies misconfigurations, privilege escalations, and vulnerable deployment patterns within container orchestration environments.
API Security: Simulate various attack scenarios to uncover vulnerabilities in API endpoints, authentication mechanisms, and data handling processes.
AI Security: Tests machine learning models and AI systems for injection, data poisoning, and other emerging AI-specific attack vectors.
Woodpecker is available as an open source project on Github. As part of the launch, Operant will also host hackathons and developer engagement programmes in India, alongside community collaborations with the Coalition for Secure AI.
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