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Security Operations · Intermediate

Initial Access

The ATT&CK tactic (TA0001) covering techniques adversaries use to gain their first foothold in a network.

Definition

Initial access techniques include phishing, exploiting public-facing applications, external remote services such as VPN and RDP, valid accounts, drive-by compromise, supply chain compromise and trusted relationships. Identifying the initial access vector is a key goal of incident investigation.

Example

Exploiting an unpatched VPN appliance to gain access to the internal network.

Exam tip

Root cause analysis in IR usually means identifying the initial access vector.

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