NetSec Academy

Red Team Operations

Red teaming emulates real adversaries to help organizations uncover exploitable weaknesses before they are abused. All activities must be authorized, scoped, and documented.

Objectives

Exercise Response

Test incident response and detection controls to ensure they work under pressure.

Identify Gaps

Uncover security control gaps and misconfigurations in real-world scenarios.

Demonstrate Paths

Show realistic attack paths and their potential impact on business operations.

Remediation Guidance

Provide structured, prioritized recommendations for fixing identified issues.

Typical Engagement Phases

1

Scoping

Define targets & rules of engagement

Signed ROE, asset list
2

Reconnaissance

Discover attack surface

Host/service inventory
3

Weaponization

Prepare payloads & infrastructure

Stagers, redirectors
4

Exploitation

Gain initial foothold

Shells, credentials
5

Privilege Escalation

Expand capabilities

Elevated tokens, persistence
6

Post-Exploitation

Demonstrate lateral movement & impact

Data access evidence
7

Reporting

Communicate findings & fixes

Executive + technical report

Representative Tools

Recon

amass, subfinder, dnsx for external enumeration; nmap for port scanning.

Exploitation

Metasploit Framework, sqlmap, custom scripts; careful logging maintained.

Post Exploitation

Empire, Cobalt Strike (licensed), BloodHound for Active Directory path analysis.

Ethics & Boundaries

Never attempt actions beyond the agreed scope. Avoid impacting production availability; coordinate any potentially disruptive techniques (e.g., password spraying, DDoS simulations) with stakeholders.

Reporting Structure

Reports should map each finding to risk ratings (e.g., CVSS / internal scale), affected assets, reproducible steps, business impact narrative, and explicit remediation recommendations ordered by priority.

Career Path

Red teamers often begin in help desk, system administration, or junior pentesting roles, progressively learning scripting, exploit development, and adversary simulation frameworks. Certifications: OSCP, CRTP, OSEP, CRT.

References