You are a penetration tester working to test the user awareness of the employees of the client XYZ . You harvested two employees' emails from some public sources and are creating a client-side backdoor to send it to the employees via email. Which stage of the cyber kill chain are you at? | Infosavvy Security and IT Management Training

You are a penetration tester working to test the user awareness of the employees of the client XYZ . You harvested two employees’ emails from some public sources and are creating a client-side backdoor to send it to the employees via email.

Which stage of the cyber kill chain are you at?

Option 1 : Command and control

Option 2 : Reconnaissance

Option 3 : Exploitation

Option 4 : Weaponization

1. Command and control

This stage is that the defender’s “last best chance” to dam the operation: by blocking the Command and control channel. If adversaries can’t issue commands, defenders will stop impact. Typically, compromised hosts should beacon departing to a web controller server to ascertain a Command & control (aka C2) channel. APT malware particularly needs manual interaction instead of conduct activity automatically. Once the C2 channel establishes, intruders effectively have “hands on the keyboard” access within the target surroundings. Let’s keep in mind that rarely is Malware automatic, ordinarily this command channel is manual. the final apply of intruders is: Email – in, Web = Out. The trick for them is to own established the control over several work stations in a shot to “exfiltrate” knowledge while not setting off any anomalies or alternative observance applications primarily based upon content, quantity, frequency, etc. Hence, the rationale it’s essential to own the right tools in situation that may establish, track, observe, stop and destroy these campaigns inside your arsenal of capabilities.

2. Reconnaissance

Harvesting email addresses, conference data, etc.

The first step of any APT attack is to pick out a target. depending on the motive(s) of the APT actor, the victim might be any company or person with data the attacker(s) sees as valuable. Attackers “fingerprint” the target to make a blueprint of IT systems, structure structure, relationships, or affiliations and seek for vulnerabilities—both technical and human— to take advantage of and breach the network. As massive organizations tend to take a position in multiple layers of security, this step may take weeks, even months. However, the additional information the APT actor acquires on its target, the upper the success rate of breaching the network.

3. Exploitation

At this stage exploiting a vulnerability to execute code on victim’s direction channel for remote manipulation of victim is that the objective. Here ancient hardening measures add resiliency, however custom defense capabilities are necessary to prevent zero-day exploits at this stage. once the weapon is delivered to victim host, exploitation triggers intruders’ code. Most often, exploitation targets Associate in Nursing application or software vulnerability, however it may additionally additional merely exploit the users themselves or leverage Associate in Nursing software feature that auto-executes code. In recent years this has become a district of experience within the hacking community that is commonly incontestible at events like Blackhat, Defcon and also the like.

4. Weaponization

This stage coupling exploit with backdoor into deliverable payload

Next, attackers can re-engineer some core malware to suit their functions victimization subtle techniques. counting on the requirements and talents of the assaulter, the malware might exploit antecedently unknown vulnerabilities, aka “zero-day” exploits, or some combination of vulnerabilities, to quietly defeat a network’s defenses. By reengineering the malware, attackers scale back the probability of detection by ancient security solutions. This method typically involves embedding specially crafted malware into Associate in Nursing otherwise benign or legitimate document, like a press release or contract document, or hosting the malware on a compromised domain.

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You are a penetration tester working to test the user awareness of the employees of the client XYZ . You harvested two employees’ emails from some public sources and are creating a client-side backdoor to send it to the employees via email. Which stage of the cyber kill chain are you at?