Consecutive Avertium expert-led penetration testing engagements uncovers complex attack paths, even in a mature security environment.

STORY AT A GLANCE

  • Industry: Food and Beverage

  • Engagement: Recurring penetration testing

  • Introduction: An enterprise food and beverage company engaged Avertium for recurring penetration testing. Across two engagements, Avertium’s experts combined persistence, manual analysis, and attack chaining to achieve domain administrator access through two distinct paths, giving the customer actionable insight to strengthen its security posture year after year. 

  • Challenge: Test the resilience of a mature security program against realistic, multi-step attacks. 

  • First-Year Discovery: Unauthenticated VNC access led to cached credentials, an exposed NAS environment, and elevated domain credentials.

  • Second-Year Discovery: Manual review uncovered an Active Directory Certificate Services misconfiguration that enabled privilege escalation.

  • Business Impact: Avertium achieved domain administrator access in two consecutive years through different attack paths.

  • Differentiator: The critical findings required persistence, manual validation, and expert attack chaining beyond automated testing alone. 

The Challenge

The organization had a mature cybersecurity program and strong defenses, making obvious weaknesses less likely. To comprehensively test the environment, Avertium needed to think and operate like a determined attacker - looking beyond automated results, validating subtle clues, and persisting long enough to uncover attack paths that were not immediately visible.

 

The Solution

Avertium conducted recurring penetration tests that paired standard testing techniques with expert-led manual analysis. Rather than stopping when an initial foothold was identified (or when automated tools returned no findings) the tester continued investigating, compared behaviors across the environment, and chained individual weaknesses into realistic attack scenarios.

 

First-Year Attack Path: From VNC Access to Domain Administrator

During the first engagement, the tester identified an unauthenticated Virtual Network Computing (VNC) service that provided access to a system. Although an automated tool could detect the exposed service, the decisive insight came from repeatedly checking the system for cached credentials and tokens.

The persistence paid off. The tester found a cached credential that provided access to a network-attached storage device. Because the device was misconfigured to allow open access to user directories, the tester could search those directories and identify a script containing elevated domain credentials. By chaining these weaknesses together, Avertium escalated access to domain administrator.

 

Second-Year Attack Path: Uncovering a Subtle Active Directory Misconfiguration

After the customer remediated the first-year findings, the tester could no longer gain the same foothold in the subsequent engagement. Using credentials provided for the assessment, the tester pivoted to standard Active Directory attack techniques. Automated tools did not identify a viable issue, so the tester manually reviewed each Active Directory Certificate Services template.

That detailed review revealed a certificate template misconfiguration that enabled privilege escalation to domain administrator. The customer again used Avertium’s findings to remediate the weakness and further strengthen its defenses.

 

WHY THE FINDING MATTERED

  • Small weaknesses created significant risk when combined. Unauthenticated access, cached credentials, open file access, and elevated credentials formed a path to domain-wide control.
  • Remediation measurably changed the environment. The first-year attack path was no longer available during the subsequent test.
  • New risks still required active discovery. Manual review identified a different privilege-escalation path that automated testing missed.
  • Recurring testing validated progress over time. Each engagement gave the customer evidence of improvement and a new set of prioritized actions. 

 

Customer Value and Recommended Actions

Avertium helped the organization understand not only which vulnerabilities existed, but how a determined attacker could connect them to gain control of the environment. The customer used the findings to close exposed access paths, correct storage and directory-service misconfigurations, protect elevated credentials, and improve its overall security posture from one year to the next.

 

The Avertium Difference

This engagement demonstrates the value of expert-led, recurring penetration testing. Automated tools can surface common exposures, but they are less likely to reproduce the persistence, contextual judgment, and manual analysis required to uncover cached credentials, trace access across systems, inspect individual certificate templates, and assemble subtle weaknesses into a realistic attack chain. Avertium’s approach helped a mature security organization continuously validate its defenses and find the risks that automation alone could leave behind. 

Want to see how your defenses hold up against persistent, real-world attack techniques?  Contact Avertium to discuss recurring penetration testing.
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