What is an attack path?

Attack paths in plain English

Imagine a burglar wants to get to the safe on the executive floor. The front door is locked, but a basement window is slightly open. Nobody checks who’s in the stairwell. The door to the executive assistant’s office is left ajar, and the key to the vault room hangs on the key rack inside. Each of these lapses seems harmless on its own. Together, they form a convenient attack path all the way to the target.

Attack paths in IT work the same way. An attacker rarely needs that one big security hole. Instead, they link several small ones: a cracked password, an overly generous permission, a server that’s missing the latest updates. Step by step, they work their way forward until they reach customer data, the financial accounting system, or control over the entire network.

For defenders, that’s good news: if you know the path, you don’t have to fix every weakness at the same time. Often it’s enough to remove one critical link in the chain.

How an attack path works

Attack paths in corporate networks usually follow a recurring pattern:

1. Initial access: The attacker gets a foot in the door, for example via a phishing email, a stolen password, or a vulnerability in an internet-facing system.
2. Looking around: The attacker explores the network. Which servers are there, and which accounts have which rights? In Windows networks, Active Directory readily provides this information, because much of it can be read by any signed-in account.
3. Escalating privileges: Through privilege escalation, the attacker obtains higher rights, such as administrator rights on the compromised computer.
4. Moving sideways: Using captured credentials, the attacker hops from system to system. Experts call this lateral movement.
5. Reaching the target: The end result might be domain administrator rights – that is, control over all accounts and computers – access to sensitive data, or the ability to encrypt systems.

MITRE ATT&CK, a freely accessible knowledge base, describes these phases and the techniques used by real attackers in detail. For Windows networks, there are also analysis tools that display accounts, groups, and permissions as a web of connections. This reveals paths that wouldn’t stand out in any configuration overview.

A practical example

A wholesaler wants to know how far an attacker could get with the account of a single employee – for example, after a successful phishing email. The testing team finds the following path:

1. The password of the local administrator account – the management account on each individual computer – is identical on all workstations. Anyone who captures it on one computer after escalating privileges can get into all the others.
2. A help desk employee recently signed in on one of these computers. Traces of their credentials are still in memory and can be extracted.
3. The help desk account – a leftover from an earlier project – has administrator rights on a file server. A domain administrator regularly signs in there, and their credentials can be harvested the same way.

Each of these points seems unspectacular on its own. Together, they lead to control over the entire domain in just a few steps. The most effective fix here is a simple rule: domain administrators sign in only on systems designated for that purpose. This breaks not only this path but many similar ones. Unique local passwords and cleaned-up help desk permissions close the remaining gaps.

Why does this matter for businesses?

Many assessments rate vulnerabilities individually. A misconfiguration rated “low” risk then lands far down the list – even though it may be the critical link in a chain. Only a look at the entire path shows which measures truly deserve priority.

For attackers, chaining weaknesses is routine. In ransomware attacks in particular, criminals try to gain far-reaching rights quickly so they can deploy extortion malware to as many systems as possible at once. If you know your attack paths, you can focus limited budget and scarce time where they have the greatest effect.

How to protect your organization

• Assume the worst: Plan as if a workstation had already been compromised (“assume breach”). How far would an attacker get from there?
• Minimize permissions: Every account gets only the rights it really needs. This applies especially to service and help desk accounts.
• Separate administrator accounts: Use highly privileged accounts only on designated systems, never on regular workstations.
• Make local passwords unique: That way, a captured administrator password can’t be used on every computer.
• Segment your network: Separate areas such as administration, production, and servers from one another – learn more under network segmentation.
• Analyze paths regularly: Have your environment assessed from an attacker’s perspective, and fix first the weaknesses that open several paths at once.

How Rootsektor can help

In an Active Directory security assessment, we make the attack paths in your Windows domain visible and show you where you can break them most effectively. In penetration tests, too, we chain findings together the way a real attacker would. We report critical vulnerabilities immediately – during the test, by phone or email to the agreed contact person. You can get a fixed-price quote after scoping via our Pentest Quote page.