Performing Lateral Movement Detection

Performing Lateral Movement Detection

Overview

Cybersecurity skill for performing lateral movement detection. Follows industry best practices and security standards.

When to Use

Trigger phrases:

• "performing lateral movement detection"
• "Detects lateral movement techniques including Pass-the-Hash, PsExec, WMI executi"

Use this skill when:

• SOC teams need to detect attackers pivoting between systems after initial compromise
• Incident investigations require tracking an attacker's movement path through the network
• Detection engineering needs lateral movement rules mapped to ATT&CK TA0008 techniques
• Red/purple team exercises identify lateral movement detection gaps

Do not use for detecting initial access or external attacks — lateral movement detection focuses on internal host-to-host pivot activity.

When NOT to Use

• When you lack proper authorization for testing
• For production systems without change management
• When the task requires legal or compliance expertise beyond technical scope

Prerequisites

• Windows Security Event Logs (EventCode 4624, 4625, 4648, 4672) from all endpoints and servers
• Sysmon deployed with process creation (EventCode 1), network connections (EventCode 3), and named pipe (EventCode 17/18)
• Network flow data (NetFlow/sFlow, Zeek connection logs) for internal traffic analysis
• SIEM with cross-source correlation capability
• Baseline of normal internal authentication patterns

Workflow

# Example: IOC detection
import re

IOC_PATTERNS = {
    "ip": r"\b(?:\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}\b",
    "domain": r"\b[a-z0-9-]+\.[a-z]{2,}\b",
    "hash_md5": r"\b[a-f0-9]{32}\b",
    "hash_sha256": r"\b[a-f0-9]{64}\b",
}

def extract_iocs(text: str) -> dict:
    return {k: re.findall(v, text) for k, v in IOC_PATTERNS.items()}

1. Plan Operations — Define objectives, scope, and success criteria for lateral movement detection operations.
2. Prepare Environment — Set up tools, access, and data sources required for lateral movement detection.
3. Execute Core Workflow — Perform the lateral movement detection operations following established procedures.
4. Validate Results — Verify that results meet quality standards and objectives.
5. Report Findings — Document results, observations, and recommendations.
6. Follow Up — Track remediation actions and verify fixes where applicable.

Tools

• Analysis Platform — Data processing and visualization
• Collaboration Tools — Team coordination and knowledge sharing

Process

1. Reconnaissance — Gather target information, identify attack surface, enumerate services
2. Analysis/Exploitation — Execute the technique, analyze results, document findings
3. Reporting — Document IOCs, write findings, provide remediation recommendations

Verification

• All lateral movement detection procedures executed completely and documented
• Findings validated against multiple data sources
• False positives identified and filtered
• Results documented with evidence and timestamps
• Recommendations provided with risk-based prioritization

Anti-Rationalization Table