Lateral movement refers to the tactic used by cyber attackers to progressively move through a network environment, gaining access to different systems, resources, or assets after initially compromising a single entry point. Once attackers have breached the perimeter or gained initial access to a network, they use lateral movement techniques to explore the network, escalate privileges, and expand their control and foothold within the targeted environment.
Key characteristics and components of lateral movement include:
- Initial Compromise: Lateral movement typically follows an initial compromise of a network, system, application, or user account through techniques such as phishing, malware infection, password guessing, or exploiting software vulnerabilities. Attackers use various attack vectors to gain a foothold within the network and establish an initial point of entry.
- Exploration and Discovery: After gaining initial access, attackers use reconnaissance techniques to explore the network topology, identify available resources, and map out the network architecture. They may use network scanning tools, enumeration techniques, and Active Directory queries to discover hosts, servers, services, user accounts, and administrative privileges within the network.
- Privilege Escalation: Attackers seek to escalate their privileges within the network to gain increased access to sensitive systems, data, or administrative functions. They exploit vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or weak security controls to elevate their privileges, escalate from user-level accounts to administrator-level accounts, or obtain access to privileged credentials or authentication tokens.
- Lateral Movement Techniques: Attackers use various lateral movement techniques to move laterally across the network, including pass-the-hash attacks, pass-the-ticket attacks, Kerberos ticket manipulation, remote code execution, remote desktop sessions, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) exploitation, lateral service movement, and abusing trust relationships between systems or domains.
- Persistence and Stealth: Attackers aim to maintain persistence and avoid detection while moving laterally within the network. They use stealthy techniques, such as living-off-the-land tactics, fileless malware, memory-only payloads, or exploiting legitimate tools and protocols, to blend in with legitimate network traffic and evade detection by security controls, such as antivirus software, intrusion detection systems (IDS), or security monitoring tools.
- Data Exfiltration and Mission Accomplishment: Lateral movement is often a precursor to data exfiltration, where attackers seek to steal sensitive information, intellectual property, or financial data from compromised systems or network resources. Once attackers achieve their objectives, such as stealing data, disrupting operations, or deploying ransomware, they may attempt to cover their tracks and erase evidence of their activities to avoid detection.
Lateral movement poses significant security risks to organizations by allowing attackers to spread laterally across the network, escalate privileges, and gain unauthorized access to critical systems and data. To mitigate lateral movement attacks, organizations should implement layered defense-in-depth security controls, such as network segmentation, least privilege access controls, endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions, network traffic monitoring, user behavior analytics, and security awareness training to detect, prevent, and respond to lateral movement activities effectively. Additionally, organizations should regularly patch and update systems, conduct vulnerability assessments and penetration testing, and enforce strong password policies and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to reduce the risk of initial compromise and lateral movement within their networks.