Techniques to discover the Windows environment

The network discovery and key assets discovery stages are critical to any attack, as they allow threat actors to understand what options are available to them and what is potentially the most effective way to achieve their goals.

One of the necessities of these stages is also to maintain stealth, since if malicious activity is detected, further development of the attack will be jeopardized. In addition, for some threat actors, the long-term collection of data and information is a goal in itself, such as in the case of corporate or state espionage. The situation is similar for classic, financially motivated APTs. In order to carry out an attack, they need to gather and study some information related to the applications used in the organization and the way they work. In such cases, “noisy” methods of obtaining information may not be the best option. However, this is not the case with ransomware operators, as the attack&...