CloudGoat vs HackSys Extreme Vulnerable Driver (HEVD): Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

CloudGoat

Security teams building AWS-native incident response skills need CloudGoat because it's free, hands-on, and designed specifically around real misconfiguration chains rather than generic vulnerabilities. The 3,500+ GitHub stars reflect adoption by security shops serious enough to run their own labs, and the capture-the-flag format forces teams to think like attackers moving laterally through cloud infrastructure. Skip this if your organization needs managed training with compliance reporting or if you lack engineers who can provision and troubleshoot AWS environments independently; CloudGoat teaches through broken infrastructure, not polished courses.

HackSys Extreme Vulnerable Driver (HEVD)

Kernel security researchers and red teamers building Windows exploitation skills need HackSys Extreme Vulnerable Driver; it's free and has 2,966 GitHub stars because it deliberately packs multiple vulnerability classes into a single driver, letting you practice the full exploit chain without hunting through real-world code. The tool isolates kernel vulnerabilities at teaching scale, so you're not reverse-engineering obfuscated production drivers or waiting for lab access. Skip this if your team needs a sandbox for zero-day triage or incident response simulation; HEVD is purely an offensive learning tool, not a defensive testing platform.