Post-Exploitation and Lateral Movement

In the context of CompTIA PenTest+, Post-Exploitation and Lateral Movement are critical phases that occur immediately after initial system compromise. While Post-Exploitation focuses on the local machine, Lateral Movement focuses on the network. Post-Exploitation aims to stabilize the foothold and extract value from the breached system. Key activities include establishing persistence (creating scheduled tasks or backdoors so access remains after a reboot), privilege escalation (moving from a standard user to Root or Administrator), and data exfiltration. Testers also focus on 'looting' sensitive information, such as dumping password hashes from the SAM database or harvesting SSH keys, and covering tracks by modifying or deleting system logs to evade detection. Lateral Movement is the process of traversing the network from the compromised host to reach the ultimate target, such as a Domain Controller or sensitive database. Since the initial entry point is rarely the final objective, testers use the compromised machine as a pivot point to route traffic into internal subnets. Techniques include 'living off the land' by using native tools like RDP, SSH, and PowerShell Remoting, or credential-based attacks like Pass-the-Hash (PtH) and Pass-the-Ticket (PtT), which allow authentication to other servers without knowing the plaintext password. This phase demonstrates how a single low-level breach can lead to a full network compromise. In the context of CompTIA PenTest+, Post-Exploitation and Lateral Movement are critical phases that occur immediately after initial system compromise. While Post-Exploitation focuses on the local machine, Lateral Movement focuses on the network. Post-Exploitation aims to stabilize the foothold and…