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Application & OT Security · Intermediate

Attack Narrative

A chronological story in a pen test report describing how testers moved from initial access to their objective.

Definition

The attack narrative connects individual findings into an attack path, showing how low and medium issues combined into a critical compromise. It helps defenders understand detection opportunities and the importance of fixing each link. It often includes timestamps useful for correlating against logs.

Example

Narrative: phishing gave a foothold, LLMNR poisoning captured a hash, cracking it enabled lateral movement to a file server holding admin credentials.

Exam tip

Narratives demonstrate chained impact; individual CVSS scores alone can understate risk.

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