Avoiding alerts

The attacker needs to avoid raising alarms at this stage. If network administrators detect that there is a threat on the network, they will thoroughly sweep through it and thwart any progress that the attacker will have made. Many organizations spend a substantial amount of money on security systems to nab attackers. Security tools are increasingly becoming more effective, and they can identify many signatures of hacking tools and malware that hackers have been using. This, therefore, calls for attackers to act wisely. There has been a trend in attackers using legitimate tools for lateral movement. These are tools and techniques that are known by the system or that belong to a system and therefore do not generally pose a threat. Security systems, therefore, ignore them because of this. These tools and techniques have enabled attackers to move around in highly secured networks right under the noses of security systems.

The following is an example of how attackers...