Chapter 9: Investigating Post-Exploitation Techniques

Initial access is just the first small step from the threat actor's perspective. Back in the day, we saw a lot of attacks focusing on immediate encryption of the initially compromised host, but now many ransomware affiliates focus on post-exploitation activities, which may include privilege escalation, credential access, reconnaissance, and others, so they can obtain control of the whole network, exfiltrate the most sensitive data, and encrypt as many hosts as possible. Also, as many threat actors focus on data exfiltration, usually they want to stay in the network as long as possible to be able to get the most sensitive data. For the same reason, they may want to deploy additional backdoors – for example, legitimate remote access software.

As you've learned from Chapter 5, Understanding Ransomware Affiliates' Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, the most common post-exploitation activities include credential...