Understanding what matters to threat actors

From a cybersecurity perspective, hacking into a system or device has always been interesting and fascinating to many people around the world. Reverse engineering a system to better understand how it works has always attracted curious minds. Similarly, hacking focuses on gaining a better understanding of how a system operates and functions, whether there are any flaws within its programming or design, and whether these security flaws can be exploited to alter the functionality of the system to enable the curious mind to take advantage of it.

However, before a cyber criminal launches any attack on a targeted organization, it’s important to plan the attack and evaluate the time and resources that are needed to perform the cyber-attack. Furthermore, the complexity of the attack and the hack value of the target help the threat actor determine whether it’s worth moving forward with the plan of attack or not.

Time

Determining the amount of time it will take from gathering information about the target to meeting the objectives of the attack is important. Sometimes, a cyber-attack can take a threat actor anything from days to a few months of careful planning to ensure each phase of the Cyber Kill Chain is successful when executed in the proper order. We will discuss this further in the Understanding the Cyber Kill Chain framework section later in this chapter.

Threat actors also need to consider the possibility that an attack or exploit might not work on the targeted system and this will create an unexpected delay during the process, which increases the time taken to meet the goals of the hack. The time to achieve objectives is not just about gaining access but also what happens afterward, such as maintaining persistence, lateral movement, and data exfiltration.

Similarly, this concept can be applied to both ethical hackers and penetration testers as they need to determine how long it will take to complete a penetration test for a customer and present a report with the findings and security recommendations to help the customer improve their security posture.

Resources

Without the right set of resources, it will be a challenge to complete a task. Threat actors need to have the right set of resources; these are software- and hardware-based tools. While skilled and seasoned hackers can manually discover and exploit security weaknesses in targeted systems, it can be a time-consuming process. However, using the right set of tools can help automate these tasks and improve the time taken to find security flaws and exploit them. Additionally, without the right skill set, a threat actor may experience some challenges in being successful in performing the cyber-attack. This can lead to seeking the support of additional persons with the skills needed to assist and contribute to achieving the objectives of the cyber-attack. Once again, this concept can be applied to security professionals such as penetration testers within the industry. Not everyone has the same skills and a team may be needed for a penetration test security assessment for a customer.

Financial factors

Another important resource is financial factors. Sometimes a threat actor does not need any additional resources and can perform a successful cyber-attack and compromise their targets. However, there may be times when additional software- or hardware-based tools are needed to increase the potential of compromising the target. Having a budget allows the threat actors to purchase the additional resources needed. Similarly, penetration testers are well-funded by their employers to ensure they have access to the best tools within the industry to excel at their jobs.

Hack value

Finally, the hack value is simply the motivation or the reason for performing a cyber-attack against a targeted system, network, or organization. For a threat actor, it’s the value of accomplishing the objectives and goals of compromising the system. Threat actors may not target an organization if they think it’s not worth the time, effort, or resources to compromise its systems. Other threat actors may target the same organization with another motive.

Having completed this section, you have learned about some of the important factors that matter to threat actors prior to performing a cyber-attack on an organization. In the next section, you will discover the importance of penetration testing and how it helps organizations improve their cyber defenses.