Attack Path Analysis (APA) Explained

What is attack path analysis?

Attack Path Analysis (APA) is a proactive cybersecurity methodology that identifies and visualizes the chain of exploitable events, vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and permissions that an attacker can link together to move from an initial entry point to a high-value target (the "crown jewels"). Unlike traditional vulnerability scanning, which lists thousands of isolated issues, APA focuses on the contextual relationship between them to reveal how an attacker actually thinks and moves.

In this blog, we explain what attack path analysis is and how, when combined with automated penetration testing, it can become a powerful way to improve your security posture.

Attack path vs. attack vector vs. attack graphs vs. attack surface

Attack vector

An attack vector is a specific method or entry point used by an adversary to gain unauthorized access to a network or exploit a vulnerability. It acts as an individual building block of a breach, ranging from technical exploits like software vulnerabilities and misconfigurations to human-centric methods like phishing. In enterprise environments, these vectors often target weak authentication through credential-based techniques, such as brute-forcing, to compromise critical services like Active Directory, SSH, FTP, and Telnet.

Attack path

An attack path is a sequence of interconnected security gaps, vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations that an attacker exploits to navigate through an IT environment and achieve a specific objective. Unlike a single vulnerability, an attack path represents the complete journey an adversary takes; from initial entry to reaching "crown jewel" assets like domain admin accounts or SYSTEM access to sensitive databases.

The relationship between attack vectors and paths

• The Vector is the "How": It is the specific exploit or technique used at a single step (e.g., a "credential-based attack vector").
• The Path is the "Journey": An attack path is the sequence of these vectors and exposures linked together, such as moving from initial entry to lateral movement and finally to domain admin compromise

Attack graphs

Attack graphs visualize the relationships between different components in an organization's directory environment, mapping how they connect and where attackers can move. They act as blueprints, illustrating all potential pathways that attackers could route to reach critical assets.

Attack surface

The attack surface represents the sum total of all hardware, software, network components, and human factors that are vulnerable to unauthorized access. It is often visualized as all the "doors and windows" of a house; the more doors and windows that exist, the larger the surface and the harder it is to defend.

How does attack path analysis work?

Data collection & asset discovery

In attack path analysis, data collection is a dynamic and continuous process that maps an organization’s directory environment (e.g., Windows Active Directory) to gather detailed information about resources and vulnerabilities. This process goes beyond traditional vulnerability scanners, continuously tracking the relationships between users, devices, and permissions, providing an up-to-date view of the attack surface.

By integrating identity mapping (such as AD objects and ACLs), infrastructure assessments (including policies and configurations), and connectivity insights (like active sessions and domain trusts), data collection uncovers the underlying connections within the network. Thus, data collection sophisticatedly mimics enumeration-based adversarial behaviors that occur after initial access (e.g., assume breach mindset), ensuring that any new asset or permission change is promptly analyzed for potential attack paths. 

Figure 1. Data Collection for Attack Path Analysis with Picus APV

Attack path analysis technologies supporting advanced enumeration & data collection enables security teams to remain proactive in defending against evolving threats in their directory environment.

Threat simulation

Threat simulation is a dynamic and iterative process that involves safely executing real-world adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) within an organization’s directory to validate whether security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities can be exploited in ways that pose critical business risks. 

This process tests the effectiveness of endpoint security measures by simulating potential attacks, ensuring that vulnerabilities are identified and addressed before they can be meaningfully exploited.

Starting from an initial access point, the simulation includes techniques like;

• vulnerability exploitation,
• privilege escalation,
• credential harvesting, and
• lateral movement. 

As new nodes (systems or high-privilege accounts) are successfully accessed, discovery techniques are immediately employed from these new vantage points, revealing previously hidden assets and relationships. This process runs concurrently with attack path mapping, continuously expanding the attack surface as new nodes and information are uncovered.

Thus, threat simulations allow CISOs to see what would happen if “somebody clicks a phishing link” from any asset or user of choice in their AD environment.

Figure 2. Threat Simulation for Attack Path Analysis with Picus APV

As new nodes (systems or high-privilege accounts) are successfully accessed, discovery techniques are immediately run from these new vantage points, revealing previously hidden assets and relationships. This process is concurrent with the attack path mapping, continuously expanding the attack surface as new nodes and information are uncovered.

Attack path mapping

Attack path mapping visualizes the potential routes an attacker could follow to reach critical assets. The map dynamically expands as the threat simulation progresses. 

New access points gained during the simulation trigger fresh discovery techniques, leading to further enumeration of assets and vulnerabilities. 

As each new node is accessed, additional data is collected, expanding the map with more detailed information. This makes the attack path mapping concurrent with the threat simulation, allowing the map to grow and adapt as vulnerabilities are exploited and new access techniques are applied.

Figure 2. Attack Path Mapping, and Attack Path Visualization with Picus APV

Hence, we can safely say that attack path mapping helps greatly for attack path visualization.

Risk prioritization

In attack path analysis, risk prioritization focuses remediation efforts on attack paths that successfully lead to high-value assets, such as Domain Admin privileges. While many techniques may be involved, the emphasis is placed on paths that ultimately achieve domain admin access.

For example, a chain like the following is prioritized due to its direct impact.

Paths leading to critical assets like domain admin accounts are ranked higher for prioritization than those ending at lower-privilege systems. Even low-risk techniques like Service Enumeration must be prioritized if they contribute to a viable attack path that leads to domain compromise.

Choke points, on the other hand, refer to intersections of multiple attack paths. Remediating these points can eliminate several critical attack paths simultaneously, thereby significantly reducing the overall risk. This ensures that security efforts are concentrated on addressing the most impactful exposures.

Benefits of an attack path analysis

Think like there is already a hacker inside: assumed breach mindset

Attack Path Analysis (APA) shifts security from reactive to proactive by assuming that the breach has already occurred and the attacker is inside the network. 

In this mindset, APA technologies map the paths an attacker could take to reach high-value assets, such as domain admin accounts. By simulating stealthy adversarial behaviors, these technologies demonstrate how vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and exposures can be chained together. This allows security teams to proactively identify and mitigate the most critical risks, ensuring defenses are focused on what matters most.

Key benefits of attack path analysis 

Attack Path Analysis (APA) and the MITRE ATT&CK framework

Attack Path Analysis works in tandem with the MITRE ATT&CK framework, which outlines adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). APA builds on this framework by:

• Identifying TTPs from MITRE ATT&CK that can be exploited within your environment.
• Detecting potential chains of TTPs that adversaries might use to execute a successful attack.
• Informing defense strategies to mitigate high-priority techniques, ensuring targeted security efforts.

By integrating APA with the MITRE ATT&CK framework, you can bridge the gap between theoretical threat modeling and practical, actionable security measures, enabling more effective defense against real-world attacks.

Real-life attack path analysis example

In this section, we’ll examine an arbitrary attack path identified in an Active Directory (AD) environment through attack path analysis, as output by Picus Attack Path Validation (APV).

Stage 1: Active Directory Enumeration

Our attack path analysis begins from an "initial access point," or "patient-zero" node. 

In this case, the attack started with the HRUSER account on workstation HR01.APVDEMO.LOCAL, a standard, unprivileged domain user. Picus APV performed Active Directory enumeration and discovered:

1. 1 workstation (HR01)
2. 2 users, including JACK (Domain Admin)

This reconnaissance identified a high-value target account, JACK, for credential theft.

Stage 2: Privilege Escalation to SYSTEM

Picus APV performed service enumeration and discovered ModifiableService, a misconfigured service with improper permissions allowing unprivileged users to modify it.

By abusing this vulnerable service, Picus APV escalated from HRUSER to NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM, gaining the highest privilege level on the local machine. This was essential for accessing credential stores.

Stage 3: LSA Credential Cache Dumping

With SYSTEM privileges, Picus APV targeted the Local Security Authority (LSA) credential cache, which stores cached domain credentials. This technique extracted an MSCacheV2 hash for the Domain Admin user JACK.

Stage 4: Offline Password Cracking

Next, Picus APV performed offline password cracking on JACK's MSCacheV2 hash. It successfully cracked the password to a clean text version, revealing the Domain Admin credentials in cleartext.

With Domain Admin credentials obtained, the Picus APV achieved complete control over the APVDEMO.LOCAL domain.

This example illustrates how attack path analysis, powered by Picus APV, enables security teams to map, prioritize, and proactively mitigate the critical steps adversaries take to escalate privileges and compromise high-value assets like domain admins.

Attack path analysis use cases

• Automates the discovery of attack paths and continuous threat emulation. Relieves red teamers from mundane tasks, allowing them to focus on creative scenarios (e.g., defense evasion points).
• Automated penetration testing and attack path mapping technologies provide attack path analysis beyond the capability of a mid-level red teamer. These technologies may suffice until red teaming capabilities mature within the organization.
• Simulates attacks from any assumed breach point (e.g., phishing as an entry) to map attacker progress, helping CISOs assess blast radius and prioritize mitigations.
• Identifies critical choke points in attack chains, enabling security teams to fortify weaknesses and break attack progression.
• Enhances SOC effectiveness by providing insights into lateral movement routes and attacker techniques, improving detection and threat hunting.
• Validates high-risk exposure combinations, focusing remediation efforts on the most impactful attack paths.
• Supports compliance by documenting vulnerability management, ensuring active mitigation in line with standards like PCI-DSS ISO 27001, DORA, SOC 2 and GDPR.
• Prioritizes remediation on attack paths leading to high-value assets like Domain Admin privileges, addressing critical vulnerabilities first.
• Identifies and mitigates risks that could lead to credential theft or data loss, preventing exploitation of high-risk exposures.
• Maps lateral movement routes to help teams secure vulnerable points, preventing further compromise.

Key capabilities of attack path analysis tools & technologies

• Automated penetration testing and attack path mapping technologies work together to deliver a continuous, and systematical attack path analysis (APA). In other words, it delivers the true meaning of attack path management. This approach simulates adversary techniques to identify and validate critical attack paths in real environments in the most realistic way possible.
• Automatically identifies and maps all resources (within a scope) across the directory environment, providing full visibility into possible attack paths using advanced enumeration techniques.
• Simulates sophisticated credential dumping, privilege escalation, and lateral movement to validate the most critical attack paths.
• Identifies vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that may contribute to an attack path (to be chained) leading to critical assets.
• Continuously updates attack paths based on newly discovered data, ensuring the most stealthy and high-risk routes are prioritized. Provide clear mappings of potential attack routes (attack path visualization) to show how attackers can exploit vulnerabilities in sequence.
• Attack paths are scored based on context-aware exploitability (depends on a tested environment), path complexity, and asset sensitivity, helping prioritize risk remediation efforts.
• Uncovers shared vulnerabilities or misconfigurations across multiple attack paths (a.k.a choke points), focusing remediation on high-impact areas to block an attacker and prevent further progress.
• Provides continuous visibility into attack surfaces, enabling ongoing risk assessment and path elimination.
• Optimizes security operations by revealing likely attack routes and informing incident detection and response strategies (incident response playbooks), highlighting the stealthiest and most business-critical attack paths starting from any initial access point.

These capabilities work together to offer proactive, comprehensive protection by identifying and mitigating exploitable attack paths before they can be leveraged by adversaries.

Role of attack path analysis in CTEM

• Attack Path Analysis (APA) helps security teams understand real-world attack vectors, aligning with CTEM’s proactive approach by visualizing how vulnerabilities are connected, not just listing isolated issues.
• APA enables organizations to anticipate attack scenarios and plan defenses accordingly, directly supporting CTEM's goal of proactive detection and response.
• Unlike traditional vulnerability management, APA in CTEM prioritizes vulnerabilities based on their likelihood of exploitation in real attacks, aligning remediation with actual business risks.
• APA in CTEM provides context for vulnerabilities, showing how they contribute to broader attack paths, ensuring remediation is based on real-world exploitability, not just theoretical risk.
• APA helps organizations deprioritize less impactful vulnerabilities, focusing resources on critical threats, aligning with CTEM's dynamic risk evaluation and real-time prioritization.
• Attack Path Analysis optimizes resource allocation by identifying choke points in attack paths, ensuring that security efforts are focused on eliminating the most critical vulnerabilities first.
• CTEM's continuous risk reduction is supported by APA, as it adapts to changes in the environment, such as new vulnerabilities or evolving attacker tactics, ensuring defenses remain up-to-date.
• By continually mapping and updating attack paths, APA in CTEM ensures that organizations are always refining their defenses, not reacting to static assessments.

What is the difference between attack path management and attack path analysis?

Key Difference:

• APA provides a one-time or periodic analysis of attack paths based on existing vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
• APM is the continuous process of managing and mitigating those paths, ensuring your defenses are always adapting to new threats and changes in your environment.

Attack path analysis is the process of identifying and visualizing potential attack paths that an adversary could take to reach critical assets in your environment. It maps vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and weak points in your security infrastructure, providing a theoretical view of possible attack routes based on existing exposures. 

Attack path management (APM), on the other hand, takes the insights from APA and transforms them into an ongoing, proactive security strategy. APM focuses on continuously managing and remediating the attack paths identified during APA.

In short, APM operationalizes APA to reduce overall exposure by eliminating high-risk attack paths over time.

Picus APV is an excellent example of attack path management. It combines automated penetration testing with attack path mapping to provide continuous attack path analysis, enabling teams to proactively identify, validate, and prioritize critical vulnerabilities across the network. By dynamically mapping exposures and attack paths, Picus APV helps security teams focus on the most impactful risks: attack paths that lead to privilege escalation, data exfiltration, and ransomware. Through ongoing testing and automated simulations, it ensures that an organization’s defenses are continuously validated and optimized, effectively reducing the attack surface and enhancing overall security posture.

Picus APV as an attack path management solution

The Picus APV is an advanced Attack Path Management and validation solution that combines automated penetration testing with attack path mapping to provide comprehensive security insights. 

Here's a concise explanation of its positioning:

• Automates Discovery and Validation: Picus APV continuously discovers and maps attack paths across the organization's network, simulating how an attacker would move from an initial breach to high-value assets (e.g., domain controllers, databases).
• Identifies Critical Attack Paths: It focuses on high-risk attack paths that could lead to severe breaches, ensuring security teams address only the most impactful vulnerabilities, saving time and resources.
• Adversary Simulation: Powered by the Picus Intelligent Adversary Decision Engine, it simulates real-world adversary tactics and exploits, confirming the feasibility of each attack step and highlighting exploitable vulnerabilities.
• Provides Mitigation Guidance: The platform provides actionable remediation suggestions for each attack path, helping teams prioritize fixes based on the potential risk reduction.
• Real-Time Continuous Testing: It offers autonomous operation, running continuously without requiring manual intervention, enabling organizations to stay ahead of emerging threats in real time.
• Seamless Integration: Picus APV integrates with existing security infrastructure, improving overall defense by testing security controls, detecting vulnerabilities, and ensuring systems are fortified against real-world threats.

By combining asset discovery, credential testing, lateral movement analysis, and ransomware risk simulation, Picus APV enables security teams to validate exploitability and prioritize remediation efforts, ultimately helping organizations reduce their attack surface and improve their security posture.

Analyzing and prioritizing attack paths with Picus

Picus provides an advanced solution for analyzing and prioritizing attack paths, combining automated penetration testing and attack path mapping to offer a comprehensive approach to threat detection. It identifies security weaknesses and misconfigurations, allowing security teams to pinpoint critical attack paths that could lead to severe business impact, such as domain admin access or ransomware attacks. By focusing on real attack scenarios, Picus enables organizations to prioritize remediation efforts based on the true exploitability of vulnerabilities, not just theoretical risks.

With Picus APV, organizations can automatically discover and map attack paths, simulating real-world adversarial actions, such as privilege escalation and lateral movement. The platform dynamically identifies high-risk exposures, maps critical attack paths, and offers actionable mitigation recommendations. This ensures security teams focus on the most pressing vulnerabilities, reducing exposure and improving defenses against advanced threats. Picus APV helps organizations streamline remediation, enhance ransomware defense, and continuously refine their security posture with automated, risk-based insights.

Request a demo today and see how our platform can help you identify, prioritize, and mitigate risks with precision, improving your defenses against real-world attacks.

See How an Attacker Can Reach Domain Admin in 7 Steps