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MITRE Caldera

MITRE Caldera is an open-source automated adversary emulation platform (security testing) designed for assessing and improving cyber defense through emulated attack behaviors aligned with the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

  • Automated adversary emulation and red-teaming (security validation)
  • Plug-in based architecture for extensible behaviors, operations, and workflows (platform framework)
  • Use of MITRE ATT&CK technique mappings to structure offensive actions (threat modeling)
  • Support for autonomous blue-team exercises and defensive control evaluation (defensive testing)
  • Central web-based interface and Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs for configuring agents, operations, and data (security operations tooling)

More About MITRE Caldera

MITRE Caldera is an open-source platform (security validation) for automated adversary emulation, red teaming, and autonomous blue-team exercises. Developed and maintained by MITRE, it is designed to help organizations evaluate and strengthen cyber defenses by running controlled, repeatable operations that emulate real-world adversary behaviors. The platform uses structured attack behaviors aligned with the MITRE ATT&CK framework (threat modeling) to organize, execute, and analyze offensive techniques against enterprise environments.

At its core, Caldera provides a server component and agents (security agents) that can be deployed on target systems to execute adversary techniques. Operations are defined as sequences of abilities that correspond to ATT&CK techniques, allowing users to build campaigns that emulate specific threat actors or kill chains (attack simulation). The platform includes a web-based user interface and REST APIs (security operations tooling) for configuring operations, managing agents, and reviewing results, enabling both manual control and automated workflows.

Caldera uses a plug-in based architecture (platform framework), where core functionality can be extended through additional plug-ins that add new abilities, planners, interfaces, or integrations. This design allows organizations to tailor Caldera to specific environments, technologies, or testing objectives. Plugins can support functions such as automated planning of operations, custom command-and-control behaviors, data collection, or reporting, depending on what MITRE and the community provide through officially released components.

In enterprise environments, Caldera is used by red teams, blue teams, and purple teams (security operations) to conduct repeatable assessments of security controls, incident response processes, and detection capabilities. Because operations are structured around ATT&CK techniques, teams can map executed behaviors to existing detections and gaps. This supports continuous security validation, regression testing after configuration changes, and training exercises that expose defenders to realistic adversary behavior without relying on ad hoc manual scripting.

From a technical perspective, Caldera runs as a server application that coordinates agents, receives execution results, and stores operation data (security platform). Agents typically communicate back to the server using configurable communication channels that emulate command-and-control traffic (C2 emulation), subject to options documented in the official project materials. The system’s extensibility enables integration into broader security tooling, such as SIEMs or Security Orchestration Automation Response (SOAR) platforms, through programmatic interfaces, allowing Caldera operations to trigger or feed enterprise monitoring and response workflows.

Within a technical directory, MITRE Caldera fits into categories such as adversary emulation platform, automated red teaming tool, and ATT&CK-based security validation framework (security testing and assessment). It is positioned for use by Security Operations (SecOps) centers, cyber defense teams, and security architects who need a structured, repeatable way to emulate attacker behavior and evaluate defensive posture against known techniques cataloged in MITRE ATT&CK.