Maintaining Access

After successfully compromising a host, if the rules of engagement permit it, it is frequently a good idea to ensure that you will be able to maintain your access for further examination or penetration of the target network. This also ensures that you will be able to reconnect to your victim if you are using a one-off exploit or crash a service on the target. In situations like these, you may not be able to regain access again until a reboot of the target is preformed.

Once you have gained access to one system, you can ultimately gain access to the systems that share the same subnet. Pivoting from one system to another, gaining information about the users activities by monitoring their keystrokes, and impersonating users with captured tokens are just a few of the techniques we will describe further in this module.