Abstract: A cloud resource management system detects resource misconfiguration for resources in a cloud including cloud policy misconfigurations and resource vulnerabilities. An attack chain analyzer identifies attack chains from misconfigured resources ordered according to stages in an attack framework that models sequential behavior for malicious attacks. The attack chains are detected according to a depth-first search traversal of adjacent resources that have pairwise exposure according to characteristics indicated in the cloud policy misconfigurations and resource vulnerabilities. The attack chain analyzer generates further diagnostics that inform remediation of resource misconfigurations for malicious attack prevention.