Adversary simulation (“Red Teaming”) assessments are scenario-based penetration tests, that focus more on achieving specific goals in the infrastructure as opposed to discovering all potential vulnerabilities.
During the test, a complete path is developed either from the outside networks or from initial employee-level access with no prior knowledge of the infrastructure to the internal protected segments and hosts of the network. The goal of the assessment may vary from compromising target hosts and services to sensitive data exfiltration.
After gaining initial access by exploiting external services, applications, or by using social engineering attacks, internal services, applications, servers, and personal machines are tested for any vulnerabilities that may allow lateral movement to other hosts and segments in the network.
Segmentation flaws are also taken into account at this stage, as they may allow the attacker to gain access to restricted regions of the infrastructure.
The penetration tester may also exploit vulnerabilities in the employee-owned machines, install keyloggers and screen grabbers, use saved passwords of the machine’s users to gain authentication credentials to internal services and applications.
Infrastructure penetration testing focuses on the security of both the application environment and the supporting infrastructure, including third-party services and applications. The testing is performed with a combination of manual and automated techniques, tailored for the specific environment.
Through cleverly crafted messages or websites, phishing grants attackers initial access to confidential data by exploiting human trust.
Adversary simulation assessments allow to completely emulate the actions of a malicious individual and trigger proper security team response.
