Vulnerability testing is conducted to detect and classify security loopholes in a system. With the rise in cyber attacks, vulnerability assessments have gained center stage in the battle against security threats.
And when it comes to vulnerability assessment, a paid tool called Cobalt Strike stands out. Promoted as an adversary simulating tool, Cobalt Strike is mostly used by security researchers for assessing their environments for vulnerabilities.
But, what is Cobalt Strike and how does it help security researchers in detecting vulnerabilities? Does it come with any special features? Let us find out.
What Is Cobalt Strike?
To thwart external threats, most businesses and organizations hire teams of security professionals and researchers. Sometimes, companies can also outsource ethical hackers or bug bounty hunters to test out their network for weaknesses.
To carry out these tasks, most security professionals utilize the services of threat emulation software geared towards finding where exactly the vulnerabilities exist and remediating them before an attacker gets a chance to exploit them.
Cobalt Strike is one such tool and a favorite among many security researchers as it performs real intrusive scans to find the exact location of the vulnerabilities. In fact, Cobalt Strike is designed to kill two birds with one stone, as it can be used both as a vulnerability assessment and a penetration testing tool.
Difference Between Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing
Most people get confused between vulnerability scanning and penetration testing. They might sound similar, but their implications are quite different.
A vulnerability assessment simply scans, identifies, and reports noted vulnerabilities, whereas a penetration test attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities to determine whether unauthorized access or other malicious activity is possible.
Penetration testing typically includes both network penetration testing and application-level security testing along with controls and processes around them. For a penetration test to be successful, it should be conducted from the internal network, as well as from the outside.
How Does Cobalt Strike Work?
Cobalt Strike’s popularity is mainly due to its beacons or payload being stealthy, and easily customizable. If you don't know what a beacon is, you can think of it as a direct line into your network, the reins of which are controlled by an attacker to carry out malicious activities.
Cobalt Strike works by sending out beacons to detect network vulnerabilities. When used as intended, it simulates an actual attack.
Also, a Cobalt Strike beacon can execute PowerShell scripts, perform keylogging activities, take screenshots, download files, and spawn other payloads.
Ways Cobalt Strike Can Help Security Researchers
It is often difficult to spot gaps or vulnerabilities in a system that you created or have been using for a long time. By using Cobalt Strike, security professionals can easily identify and remediate vulnerabilities and rate them based on the severity of issues they can potentially cause.
Here are some ways tools like Cobalt Strike can help security researchers:
Cybersecurity Monitoring
Cobalt Strike can help monitor a company's cybersecurity on a regular basis by utilizing a platform that attacks the corporate network using multiple attack vectors (e.g., email, internet browsing, web application vulnerabilities, social engineering attacks) to detect the weak spots that could be exploited.
Spotting Outdated Software
Cobalt Strike can be used to discover if a company or business is using outdated versions of software and if any patching is required.
Identifying Weak Domain Passwords
Most security breaches of today involve weak and stolen passwords. Cobalt Strike comes in handy in the identification of users with weak domain passwords.
Analyzing the Overall Security Posture
It provides an overall picture of a company's security posture, including what data may be particularly vulnerable, so security researchers can prioritize the risks that need immediate attention.
Confirming Efficacy of Endpoint Security Systems
Cobalt Strike can also provide testing against controls such as email security sandboxes, firewalls, endpoint detection, and antivirus software to determine effectiveness against common and advanced threats.
Special Features Offered by Cobalt Strike
To spot and remediate vulnerabilities, Cobalt Strike offers the following special features:
Attack Package
Cobalt Strike offers a variety of attack packages to conduct a web drive-by attack or to transform an innocent file into a trojan horse for a simulation attack.
Here are the various attack packages offered by Cobalt Strike:
Browser Pivoting
Browser Pivoting is a technique that essentially leverages an exploited system to gain access to the browser’s authenticated sessions. It is a powerful way to demonstrate risk with a targeted attack.
Cobalt Strike implements browser pivoting with a proxy server that injects into 32-bit and 64-bit Internet Explorer. When you browse through this proxy server, you inherit cookies, authenticated HTTP sessions, and client SSL certificates.
Spear Phishing
A variant of phishing, spear phishing is a method that intentionally targets specific individuals or groups within an organization. This helps in identifying weak targets within an organization, such as employees that are more prone to security attacks.
Cobalt Strike offers a spear-phishing tool that lets you import a message by replacing links and text to build a convincing phish for you. It allows you to send this pixel-perfect spear-phishing message using an arbitrary message as a template.
Reporting and Logging
Cobalt Strike also offers post-exploitation reports that provide a timeline and the indicators of compromise detected during red team activity.
Cobalt Strike exports these reports as both PDF and MS Word documents.
Cobalt Strike–Still a Preferred Choice for Security Researchers?
A proactive approach to mitigating cyber threats consists of deploying a cyber simulation platform. While Cobalt Strike has all the potentials for a robust threat emulation software, threat actors have recently found ways to exploit it and are using it to carry out undercover cyber attacks.
Needless to say, the same tool used by organizations to improve their security is now being exploited by cybercriminals to help break through their security.
Does this mean the days of using Cobalt Strike as a threat mitigation tool are over? Well, not really. The good news is that Cobalt Strike is built on a very powerful framework and with all the salient features it offers, it will hopefully stay on the list of favorites among security professionals.