Hands-On Red Team Tactics

Your guide to learning and implementing red team tactics effectively

• Target a complex enterprise environment in a red team activity
• Detect threats and respond to them with a real-world cyber attack simulation
• Explore advanced penetration testing tools and techniques

Cybersecurity red teaming is used to enhance security by performing simulated attacks on an organization to detect network and system vulnerabilities. This book starts with an overview of pentesting and red teaming, and introduces you to some of the latest pentesting tools. You'll then explore Metasploit and get to grips with Armitage. Once you've studied the fundamentals, you'll learn how to use Cobalt Strike and set up its team server.

Hands-On Red Team Tactics covers some lesser known techniques for pivoting and helps you pivot over SSH, before using Cobalt Strike in a monitored environment. This guide demonstrates advanced post-exploitation methods and introduces you to Command and Control (C2) servers and redirectors, which will help you keep your team severs from getting detected. You'll achieve persistence using beacons and data exfiltration, and understand how to use red team activity tools, such as Empire, on Active Directory and Domain Controller. Furthermore, you'll be able to maintain persistent access, stay untraceable, and get reverse connections over different C2 covert channels.

By the end of this book, you'll be well versed with advanced penetration testing tools, techniques to get reverse shells over encrypted channels, and processes for post-exploitation.

• Get started with red team engagements using less common methods
• Explore a variety of post-exploitation techniques
• Get acquainted with all the tools and frameworks included in the Metasploit framework
• Discover how you can gain stealth access to systems via red teaming
• Understand the concept of redirectors to add further anonymity to your C2
• Work through a range of uncommon data exfiltration techniques

Hands-On Red Team Tactics is for you if you are an IT professional, pentester, security consultant, or ethical hacker interested in the IT security domain and want to go beyond penetration testing. Prior knowledge of penetration testing will assist with understanding key concepts covered in this book.

1. Red-Teaming and Pentesting
2. Pentesting 2018
3. Foreplay - Metasploit Basics
4. Getting Started with Cobalt Strike
5. ./ReverseShell
6. Pivoting
7. Age of Empire - The Beginning
8. Age of Empire - Owning Domain Controllers
9. Cobalt Strike - Red Team Operations
10. C2 - Master of Puppets
11. Obfuscating C2s - Introducing Redirectors
12. Achieving Persistence
13. Data Exfiltration