OpenAEV vs PurpleSharp

OpenAEV is an Adversarial Exposure Validation platform for creating cyberattack simulations, stress tests, and crisis exercises. Its breach and attack simulations draw on cyber threat intelligence and map scenarios to MITRE ATT&CK and ATLAS. Attack Chaining links actions into paths based on findings; teams can orchestrate these manually or use dedicated agents. Structured tabletop exercises are available for evaluating readiness, escalation, coordination, communication, and response. Adversarial Exposure Scoring tracks posture over time and maps coverage to MITRE ATT&CK and domain-based controls. The product lists more than 30 integrations and connections to OpenCTI, threat feeds, EDR/XDR, SIEM, and SOC playbooks. Deployment options include cloud, on-premise, and multi-tenant setups, with air-gapped and bring-your-own-cloud options listed for Enterprise Edition. Community Edition is free forever for on-premise core simulations and tabletop exercises, with community support. Enterprise Edition pricing is quote-based, and its SaaS trial lasts 30 days. Components are available as Docker images and manual installation packages; Kubernetes is recommended for production deployments.

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.