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Lateral Movement

Lateral movement is the process attackers use to move from an initial foothold to other systems and network segments to reach high value assets.

What is lateral movement?How it typically works?Common techniques & variantsImpactFurther reading

What is lateral movement?

After initial compromise attackers rarely stop at the first host. Lateral movement is the set of techniques used to discover network topology, escalate privileges, and access additional targets. The goal is often to reach domain controllers, databases, or backup servers where sensitive data or control of the environment is possible. Lateral movement is a key phase in complex intrusions and is often combined with persistence to ensure continued access during the operation.

How it typically works?

  1. Discovery: attacker enumerates available hosts, services, trusts, and credentials on the network.
  2. Credential acquisition: attacker harvests passwords, tokens, or hashes from compromised hosts.
  3. Privilege escalation: gain higher rights to access additional systems or sensitive resources.
  4. Remote execution and pivot: use remote execution tools and protocols to run code on new targets.
  5. Repeat: iterate discovery and compromise until objectives are reached.

Common techniques & variants

  • Credential reuse and pass the hash style attacks: use stolen credentials or authentication artifacts to access other systems.
  • Remote execution tools: abuse standard administration protocols and tools to run code remotely such as remote desktop and remote command execution.
  • SMB and file share abuse: move laterally via shared file systems and mapped drives.
  • Service account compromise: leverage accounts with wide privileges to access multiple hosts.
  • Living off the land techniques: use legitimate administrative utilities to avoid detection while moving across the network.

Impact

Lateral movement expands the blast radius of an intrusion and often determines the business impact. Once adversaries reach central services they can exfiltrate data, deploy ransomware widely, or sabotage critical functions. For SecOps teams preventing lateral movement requires strict privilege separation, credential hygiene, network segmentation, and continuous monitoring for anomalous authentication and remote execution patterns.

Further reading

  • MITRE ATT&CK: lateral movement techniques. Read more
  • NIST: detecting lateral movement and monitoring guidance. Read more
  • CISA: guidance on detecting and preventing network movement. Read more
  • SANS: practical detection and hunting guides. Read more

Related topics

PersistenceAPTZero Day Exploits