MITRE Caldera vs PurpleSharp

MITRE Caldera automates adversary emulation and routine cybersecurity assessments using the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Its listed uses include autonomous emulation, detection and response platform testing, manual red-team work, and red-versus-blue research. Adversary profiles can be used to exercise defenses and train blue teams. The core combines an asynchronous command-and-control server, a REST API, and a web interface; plugins add capabilities including Atomic Red Team techniques, operational technology support, ATT&CK visualizations, incident response, reporting, and training. Its default Sandcat agent is written in Go and supports cross-platform deployment, beaconing, instruction execution, payload downloads, and file uploads. Caldera is free, open source under Apache License 2.0, and intended for on-premises deployment. Installation is documented from source and through Docker, with full and slim container variants. The project lists Linux or macOS and Python 3.10 or later with pip as host requirements, and recommends at least 8 GB RAM and 2 CPUs for the core framework. It advises running Caldera in a secure environment or network because its web interface is not hardened or thoroughly penetration-tested.

PurpleSharp is a free, open-source C# adversary simulation tool for Windows Active Directory environments. It generates attack telemetry for detection teams building and testing analytics, checking detection resilience, locating visibility gaps, and identifying event-logging pipeline problems. Documentation maps 47 MITRE ATT&CK techniques across execution, persistence, privilege escalation, credential access, lateral movement, discovery, and defense evasion. JSON playbooks can combine techniques, define variations, and set technique-specific parameters. Local simulations run interactively after copying the PurpleSharp assembly to a host. Remote simulations use Windows SMB and RPC, requiring administrative credentials on the target plus network access to TCP ports 445 and 135. Scout tasks retrieve audit policy, event subscriptions, PowerShell logging settings, processes, and services. ATT&CK Navigator layers can be exported or imported as JSON playbooks. PurpleSharp is self-hosted on Windows, requires .NET Framework 4.5, and is licensed under BSD 3-Clause. The latest documented release is v1.3 from August 2021.