Keys to the Kingdom – Gaining access to the Physical Facility through Internal Access


This is a story of network segmentation and the impact that seemingly trivial misconfigurations can have for your organization. This is one of those occasions.

This particular pen test asked for goals-based assessment focusing on post-compromise activities — an attempt by the client to discover how vulnerable internal systems were to lateral movement by an attacker who had compromised the domain. Among the goals was a request to attempt to compromise the client’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure and a secondary request to access and exploit any systems discovered to contain sensitive or critical operational data .

Read more…
Source: Rapid7


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Water company’s leaky security earns near-£1M fine

    May 11, 2026

    The UK’s data protection watchdog has fined South Staffordshire Water’s parent company nearly £1 million over security failings exposed by the Cl0p ransomware attack in 2022. Issuing the fine of £963,900 ($1.3 million), the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the attack exposed “significant failures in the company’s approach to data security.” The attack, claimed by Cl0p, was detected ...

  • Adversaries Leverage AI for Vulnerability Exploitation, Augmented Operations, and Initial Access

    May 11, 2026

    Since our February 2026 report on AI-related threat activity, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) has continued to track a maturing transition from nascent AI-enabled operations to the industrial-scale application of generative models within adversarial workflows. This report, based on insights derived from Mandiant incident response engagements, Gemini, and GTIG’s proactive research, highlights the dual nature ...

  • Study warns cost-cutting use of generative AI could increase cyber-attack risks

    May 3, 2026

    Newly published research from a leading computer scientist warns that the use of generative AI to design, train, or perform steps within a machine learning system could increase serious risks. Michael Lones, professor at Heriot-Watt University’s School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, has argued in a new paper that generative AI could expose organizations and ...

  • ASD: Careful Adoption of Agentic AI Services

    May 1, 2026

    Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly operate across critical infrastructure and defence sectors and support mission-critical capabilities. As agentic AI systems play a growing operational role, it is crucial for defenders to implement security controls to protect national security and critical infrastructure from agentic AI-specific risks. Agentic AI can automate repetitive, well-defined and low-risk tasks. However, ...

  • Nasty cPanel vulnerability probably exploited as a 0-day

    April 30, 2026

    Emergency patches are available for a critical vulnerability in cPanel and WHM that allows attackers to bypass authentication and gain root access to servers managed using it. Given that cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) control panel help manage properties for 70 million domains, by some estimates, and the critical severity of CVE-2026-41940 (9.8), the vulnerability is ...

  • Adapting Zero Trust Principles to Operational Technology

    April 29, 2026

    Zero trust (ZT) offers a modern, adaptive approach to cybersecurity by eliminating implicit trust and continuously validating access based on identity, context, and risk. ZT principles assume a breach has already occurred and are designed to limit threat actor movement and potential damage. For operational technology (OT), applying ZT requires careful consideration because OT systems interact ...