How the Red Team Audits a Large Company: Strategies, Phases, and Key Considerations
Introduction
Auditing a large company presents unique challenges for Red Teams due to the scale, diversity of infrastructure, and complexity of security controls involved. Conducting a Red Team audit in such an environment requires careful planning, extensive reconnaissance, and precise execution to identify and exploit potential vulnerabilities effectively. This article explores the strategies, phases, and key considerations Red Teams employ when auditing large organizations, providing insights into how these assessments can strengthen a company’s security posture.
Objectives of a Red Team Audit
In a large organization, the main objectives of a Red Team audit are to identify vulnerabilities that could lead to unauthorized access, assess security controls across diverse departments, and test the organization’s ability to detect and respond to realistic threats. These audits aim to simulate sophisticated attacks to uncover security weaknesses, improve defense mechanisms, and ultimately, reduce the attack surface.
Phases of a Red Team Audit for Large Companies
A successful Red Team audit is structured around several critical phases, each designed to test specific security aspects while minimizing operational disruptions.
- Planning and Scope Definition
Before launching the audit, the Red Team works closely with stakeholders to define objectives, determine rules of engagement, and establish the audit’s scope. In a large company, this phase is crucial to identify target departments, critical assets, and acceptable boundaries for testing.
- Considerations: Define clear objectives, such as testing physical security, social engineering defenses, or data exfiltration resilience. Align with legal and compliance teams to address any regulatory or privacy concerns.
- Reconnaissance
Reconnaissance is the information-gathering phase, where the Red Team collects as much data as possible about the company’s infrastructure, assets, and personnel. This phase may involve extensive passive and active techniques due to the large scope of the target.
- Techniques: OSINT, DNS enumeration, IP footprinting, social media analysis, and identifying third-party services.
- Tools: Shodan, Amass, Recon-ng, LinkedIn searches, and Maltego.
- Initial Access and Entry Points
With gathered intelligence, the Red Team seeks initial access by exploiting weak points in the network, such as exposed services, vulnerabilities in third-party integrations, or unpatched systems. In large companies, initial access can also come from social engineering attacks targeting employees across departments.
- Techniques: Phishing campaigns, spear-phishing, exploiting known vulnerabilities, and credential stuffing.
- Tools: GoPhish, Social-Engineer Toolkit (SET), Metasploit, and SQLmap.
- Privilege Escalation and Establishing Persistence
Once access is achieved, the Red Team works to escalate privileges and maintain persistence. In a large organization, privilege escalation is often necessary to gain access to high-value assets and sensitive information across interconnected systems.
- Techniques: Credential dumping, privilege escalation exploits, scheduled tasks, and creating new user accounts.
- Tools: Mimikatz, PowerUp, BloodHound, and Empire.
- Lateral Movement and Targeted Asset Access
After gaining higher privileges, the Red Team moves laterally through the network to access target assets. This phase can involve navigating Active Directory (AD), bypassing segmentation controls, and compromising additional systems.
- Techniques: Pass-the-Hash, Pass-the-Ticket, exploiting RDP and SMB shares, and navigating AD environments.
- Tools: CrackMapExec, PsExec, BloodHound, and Impacket.
- Data Exfiltration Simulation
To assess the company’s ability to detect unauthorized data movement, the Red Team simulates exfiltrating sensitive information. This phase tests the organization’s detection capabilities, such as data loss prevention (DLP) and network monitoring.
- Techniques: File compression, DNS tunneling, HTTPS upload, and data encoding.
- Tools: Exfiltrator-PS, Rclone, DNSCat2, and PowerShell.
- Covering Tracks and Evading Detection
During the operation, the Red Team takes steps to evade detection and cover their tracks to simulate advanced threat actor behaviors. This includes deleting logs, obfuscating scripts, and using stealth tactics.
- Techniques: Clearing event logs, disabling security tools, modifying timestamps, and obfuscating network traffic.
- Tools: Meterpreter, Auditpol, PowerShell, and Ncat.
- Reporting and Debriefing
After completing the audit, the Red Team compiles a detailed report of findings, including all exploited vulnerabilities, methods used, and recommendations. In a large company, the report should also be tailored to address different departments and technical teams involved in remediation.
- Considerations: Structure the report to include both executive summaries and technical breakdowns, ensuring actionable recommendations for each identified issue.
Key Considerations for Red Team Audits in Large Companies
Red Team audits in large organizations require additional planning and coordination due to the scale and diversity of operations. Key considerations include:
- Compliance and Legal Regulations
Large companies are often subject to strict regulations, such as GDPR, CCPA, and industry-specific standards like HIPAA or PCI-DSS. The Red Team must coordinate with compliance teams to ensure testing aligns with legal requirements and does not infringe on data privacy policies.
- Coordination with IT and Security Teams
Collaboration with internal IT and security teams is essential for scope definition, ensuring certain systems or sensitive data are excluded as needed. However, to maintain realism, these teams are often kept unaware of the specific attack methods and timings.
- Minimizing Operational Impact
In a large company, disruptions from Red Team operations can be costly. The Red Team must balance realism with caution, carefully planning activities to minimize downtime or unintended service interruptions, especially for critical systems.
- Testing Diverse Environments
Large organizations typically have diverse environments, including on-premise servers, cloud services, and remote endpoints. The Red Team must be prepared to test these environments comprehensively, using tools and techniques suited to each.
- Multi-Departmental Targeting
In large companies, certain departments may handle especially sensitive information or systems, such as finance, HR, or R&D. The Red Team often targets multiple departments, testing how employees handle phishing attempts, social engineering, and direct attacks.
- Monitoring for Detection Capability
Throughout the audit, the Red Team may note when, where, and how security controls detect their activities. This information is valuable for testing the company’s monitoring tools and refining incident response processes.
Red Team Tools for Large-Scale Audits
For large organizations, Red Teams use specialized tools to manage the complexity and scale of the environment:
- BloodHound: Maps AD permissions and relationships, identifying lateral movement paths and high-value targets in complex environments.
- Cobalt Strike: An all-in-one C2 tool that supports advanced threat simulation, post-exploitation, and covert data exfiltration.
- Mimikatz: A credential dumping tool for privilege escalation, allowing Red Teams to access cached passwords and other sensitive information.
- CrackMapExec: Automates lateral movement and credential validation across multiple hosts, simplifying operations in Windows environments.
- PowerShell Empire: A post-exploitation framework that provides command and control and supports various stealth tactics.
- Shodan: Used during reconnaissance to identify exposed devices and services connected to the internet, especially for organizations with distributed locations.
Frameworks for Red Teaming Large Companies
Several frameworks guide Red Team operations in large-scale environments, providing structure and ensuring comprehensive testing:
- MITRE ATT&CK
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is an industry-standard for mapping adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). It’s particularly valuable in large organizations as it ensures thorough coverage of attack vectors and maintains consistency across Red Team operations.
- Cyber Kill Chain
The Cyber Kill Chain model, developed by Lockheed Martin, outlines the stages of a cyber attack. Red Teams use this model to simulate attacks from reconnaissance to data exfiltration, ensuring that all stages of an attack are adequately tested.
- NIST 800-115
NIST Special Publication 800-115 provides a structured approach to technical security assessments. For large organizations, NIST offers guidelines on coordinating with internal teams, minimizing operational impacts, and ensuring compliance.
Post-Engagement Review
After completing the Red Team audit, the organization should conduct a debriefing session to review findings, gather insights, and identify areas for improvement. This post-engagement review focuses on:
- Understanding Vulnerabilities: Addressing the weaknesses exploited during the audit and discussing solutions with respective departments.
- Improving Detection and Response: Identifying where monitoring and response capabilities can be strengthened based on missed detection events.
- Implementing Recommendations: Developing action plans to remediate vulnerabilities and enhance security measures across departments.
Conclusion
Red Team audits in large organizations are comprehensive engagements that test security at every level, from reconnaissance to persistence and data exfiltration. By simulating real-world attacks, Red Teams help identify vulnerabilities and assess the organization’s defenses, ultimately improving resilience against advanced threats. With the right strategies, tools, and frameworks, Red Teams can provide invaluable insights that lead to stronger security postures across complex corporate environments.
