Automating and remote controlling web browsers as an adversarial technique
Browsers are extremely powerful and offer the capability to store credentials, so you might be lucky just looking through a browser process memory to find cookies, passwords, or other information that could be relevant. We've already explored these scenarios, including how to steal saved passwords from Edge by accessing Windows Credential Manager.
What we will explore now is how to automate a browser so that we can remote control a session.
Based on an example we have been using in this book, let's consider Alice's workstation. Alice uses Windows and browses the web with a variety of browsers, include Edge and Chrome. Unfortunately, her workstation was compromised by Mallory via a phishing attack. Mallory is poised to search for credentials on the machine with similar tactics, but she wants to try something new.
Rather than exfiltrating cookies, why not use Alice's browser directly...