Essential reading for business leaders and policymakers, an in-depth investigation of red teaming, the practice of inhabiting the perspective of potential competitors to gain a strategic advantage Red teaming. The concept is as old as the Devil's Advocate, the eleventh-century Vatican official charged with discrediting candidates for sainthood. Today, red teams are used widely in both the public and the private sector by those seeking to better understand the interests, intentions, and capabilities of institutional rivals. In the right circumstances, red teams can yield impressive results, giving businesses an edge over their competition, poking holes in vital intelligence estimates, and troubleshooting dangerous military missions long before boots are on the ground. But not all red teams are created equal; indeed, some cause more damage than they prevent. Drawing on a fascinating range of case studies, Red Team shows not only how to create and empower red teams, but also what to do with the information they produce. In this vivid, deeply-informed account, national security expert Micah Zenko provides the definitive book on this important strategy -- full of vital insights for decision makers of all kinds.

Red Teaming is a revolutionary new way to make critical and contrarian thinking part of the planning process of any organization, allowing companies to stress-test their strategies, flush out hidden threats and missed opportunities and avoid being sandbagged by competitors. Today, most — if not all — established corporations live with the gnawing fear that there is another Uber out there just waiting to disrupt their industry. Red Teaming is the cure for this anxiety. The term was coined by the U.S. Army, which has developed the most comprehensive and effective approach to Red Teaming in the world today in response to the debacles of its recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the roots of Red Teaming run very deep: to the Roman Catholic Church’s “Office of the Devil’s Advocate,” to the Kriegsspiel of the Prussian General Staff and to the secretive AMAN organization, Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence. In this book, author Bryce Hoffman shows business how to use the same techniques to better plan for the uncertainties of today’s rapidly changing economy. Red Teaming is both a set of analytical tools and a mindset. It is designed to overcome the mental blind spots and cognitive biases that all of us fall victim to when we try to address complex problems. The same heuristics that allow us to successfully navigate life and business also cause us to miss or ignore important information. It is a simple and provable fact that we do not know what we do not know. The good news is that, through Red Teaming, we can find out. In this book, Hoffman shows how the most innovative and disruptive companies, such as Google and Toyota, already employ some of these techniques organically. He also shows how many high-profile business failures, including those that sparked the Great Recession, could easily have been averted by using these approaches. Most importantly, he teaches leaders how to make Red Teaming part of their own planning process, laying the foundation for a movement that will change the way America does business.

This book is the culmination of years of experience in the information technology and cybersecurity field. Components of this book have existed as rough notes, ideas, informal and formal processes developed and adopted by the authors as they led and executed red team engagements over many years. The concepts described in this book have been used to successfully plan, deliver, and perform professional red team engagements of all sizes and complexities. Some of these concepts were loosely documented and integrated into red team management processes, and much was kept as tribal knowledge. One of the first formal attempts to capture this information was the SANS SEC564 Red Team Operation and Threat Emulation course. This first effort was an attempt to document these ideas in a format usable by others. The authors have moved beyond SANS training and use this book to detail red team operations in a practical guide. The authors' goal is to provide practical guidance to aid in the management and execution of professional red teams. The term 'Red Team' is often confused in the cybersecurity space. The terms roots are based on military concepts that have slowly made their way into the commercial space. Numerous interpretations directly affect the scope and quality of today's security engagements. This confusion has created unnecessary difficulty as organizations attempt to measure threats from the results of quality security assessments. You quickly understand the complexity of red teaming by performing a quick google search for the definition, or better yet, search through the numerous interpretations and opinions posted by security professionals on Twitter. This book was written to provide a practical solution to address this confusion. The Red Team concept requires a unique approach different from other security tests. It relies heavily on well-defined TTPs critical to the successful simulation of realistic threat and adversary techniques. Proper Red Team results are much more than just a list of flaws identified during other security tests. They provide a deeper understanding of how an organization would perform against an actual threat and determine where a security operation's strengths and weaknesses exist.Whether you support a defensive or offensive role in security, understanding how Red Teams can be used to improve defenses is extremely valuable. Organizations spend a great deal of time and money on the security of their systems. It is critical to have professionals who understand the threat and can effectively and efficiently operate their tools and techniques safely and professionally. This book will provide you with the real-world guidance needed to manage and operate a professional Red Team, conduct quality engagements, understand the role a Red Team plays in security operations. You will explore Red Team concepts in-depth, gain an understanding of the fundamentals of threat emulation, and understand tools needed you reinforce your organization's security posture.

Develop your red team skills by learning essential foundational tactics, techniques, and procedures, and boost the overall security posture of your organization by leveraging the homefield advantage Key FeaturesBuild, manage, and measure an offensive red team programLeverage the homefield advantage to stay ahead of your adversariesUnderstand core adversarial tactics and techniques, and protect pentesters and pentesting assetsBook Description It's now more important than ever for organizations to be ready to detect and respond to security events and breaches. Preventive measures alone are not enough for dealing with adversaries. A well-rounded prevention, detection, and response program is required. This book will guide you through the stages of building a red team program, including strategies and homefield advantage opportunities to boost security. The book starts by guiding you through establishing, managing, and measuring a red team program, including effective ways for sharing results and findings to raise awareness. Gradually, you'll learn about progressive operations such as cryptocurrency mining, focused privacy testing, targeting telemetry, and even blue team tooling. Later, you'll discover knowledge graphs and how to build them, then become well-versed with basic to advanced techniques related to hunting for credentials, and learn to automate Microsoft Office and browsers to your advantage. Finally, you'll get to grips with protecting assets using decoys, auditing, and alerting with examples for major operating systems. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to build, manage, and measure a red team program effectively and be well-versed with the fundamental operational techniques required to enhance your existing skills. What you will learnUnderstand the risks associated with security breachesImplement strategies for building an effective penetration testing teamMap out the homefield using knowledge graphsHunt credentials using indexing and other practical techniquesGain blue team tooling insights to enhance your red team skillsCommunicate results and influence decision makers with appropriate dataWho this book is for This is one of the few detailed cybersecurity books for penetration testers, cybersecurity analysts, security leaders and strategists, as well as red team members and chief information security officers (CISOs) looking to secure their organizations from adversaries. The program management part of this book will also be useful for beginners in the cybersecurity domain. To get the most out of this book, some penetration testing experience, and software engineering and debugging skills are necessary.

Your one-stop guide to learning and implementing Red Team tactics effectively Key FeaturesTarget a complex enterprise environment in a Red Team activityDetect threats and respond to them with a real-world cyber-attack simulationExplore advanced penetration testing tools and techniquesBook Description Red Teaming is used to enhance security by performing simulated attacks on an organization in order to detect network and system vulnerabilities. Hands-On Red Team Tactics starts with an overview of pentesting and Red Teaming, before giving you an introduction to few of the latest pentesting tools. We will then move on to exploring Metasploit and getting to grips with Armitage. Once you have studied the fundamentals, you will learn how to use Cobalt Strike and how to set up its team server. The book introduces some common lesser known techniques for pivoting and how to pivot over SSH, before using Cobalt Strike to pivot. This comprehensive guide demonstrates advanced methods of post-exploitation using Cobalt Strike and introduces you to Command and Control (C2) servers and redirectors. All this will help you achieve persistence using beacons and data exfiltration, and will also give you the chance to run through the methodology to use Red Team activity tools such as Empire during a Red Team activity on Active Directory and Domain Controller. In addition to this, you will explore maintaining persistent access, staying untraceable, and getting reverse connections over different C2 covert channels. By the end of this book, you will have learned about advanced penetration testing tools, techniques to get reverse shells over encrypted channels, and processes for post-exploitation. What you will learnGet started with red team engagements using lesser-known methodsExplore intermediate and advanced levels of post-exploitation techniquesGet acquainted with all the tools and frameworks included in the Metasploit frameworkDiscover the art of getting stealthy access to systems via Red TeamingUnderstand the concept of redirectors to add further anonymity to your C2Get to grips with different uncommon techniques for data exfiltrationWho this book is for Hands-On Red Team Tactics is for you if you are an IT professional, pentester, security consultant, or ethical hacker interested in the IT security domain and wants to go beyond Penetration Testing. Prior knowledge of penetration testing is beneficial.

Want Red Team offensive advice from the biggest cybersecurity names in the industry? Join our tribe. The Tribe of Hackers team is back with a new guide packed with insights from dozens of the world’s leading Red Team security specialists. With their deep knowledge of system vulnerabilities and innovative solutions for correcting security flaws, Red Team hackers are in high demand. Tribe of Hackers Red Team: Tribal Knowledge from the Best in Offensive Cybersecurity takes the valuable lessons and popular interview format from the original Tribe of Hackers and dives deeper into the world of Red Team security with expert perspectives on issues like penetration testing and ethical hacking. This unique guide includes inspiring interviews from influential security specialists, including David Kennedy, Rob Fuller, Jayson E. Street, and Georgia Weidman, who share their real-world learnings on everything from Red Team tools and tactics to careers and communication, presentation strategies, legal concerns, and more Learn what it takes to secure a Red Team job and to stand out from other candidates Discover how to hone your hacking skills while staying on the right side of the law Get tips for collaborating on documentation and reporting Explore ways to garner support from leadership on your security proposals Identify the most important control to prevent compromising your network Uncover the latest tools for Red Team offensive security Whether you’re new to Red Team security, an experienced practitioner, or ready to lead your own team, Tribe of Hackers Red Team has the real-world advice and practical guidance you need to advance your information security career and ready yourself for the Red Team offensive.

A manual for the very first physical red team operation methodology. This book teaches how to execute every stage of a physical red team operation fromreconnaissance, to team mobilization, to offensive strike, and exfiltration. Forthe first time in the physical red teaming industry, a consistent, repeatable, andcomprehensive step-by-step introduction to the REDTEAMOPSEC methodology -created and refined by Jeremiah Talamantes of RedTeam Security - subject ofthe viral documentary titled, "Hacking the Grid."